(Fethi Mansouri (Eds.) ) Cultural, Religious and Po

Fethi Mansouri Editor
Cultural,
Religious
and Political
Contestations
The Multicultural Challenge
Cultural, Religious and Political Contestations
Fethi Mansouri
Editor
Cultural, Religious
and Political Contestations
The Multicultural Challenge
Editor
Fethi Mansouri
Alfred Deakin Institute For Citizenship
and Globalisation
Deakin University
Melbourne, VIC, Australia
ISBN 978-3-319-16002-3 ISBN 978-3-319-16003-0 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16003-0
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Contents
Part I Histories and Politics of Multiculturalism

1 The Multicultural Experiment:
Premises, Promises, and Problems ....................................................... 3
Fethi Mansouri
2 Multicultural Inclusion Confronts Questions
of National Identity ................................................................................ 17
Peter Kivisto
3 Multiculturalism, Rights and Religion: The Individual’s
Human Right to Participate and Belong.............................................. 31
Paul Morris
4 Multiple Multiculturalisms: Resentment, Religion
and Liberalism ....................................................................................... 49
Patrick Imbert
Part II Justice and Education as Key Dimensions of Multiculturalism

5 Disenchantments: Counter-Terror Narratives
and Conviviality ..................................................................................... 71
Michele Grossman
6 Between Rhetoric and Reality: Shari’a and the Shift Towards
Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Australia............................................. 91
Joshua M. Roose and Adam Possamai
7 Multiculturalism and Education .......................................................... 107
Elizabeth Rata
8 “The Only Blonde in the Playground”: School Choice
and the Multicultural Imaginary.......................................................... 119
Georgina Tsolidis
v
vi Contents
9 A Multicultural Italy? ........................................................................... 135

Riccardo Armillei
Part III Performing Multicultural Belongings

10 At Home/Out of Place: Young People’s
Multicultural Belongings ....................................................................... 155
Anita Harris
11 “And Yet We Are Still Excluded”: Reclaiming Multicultural
Queer Histories and Engaging with Contemporary
Multicultural Queer Realities ............................................................... 169
Lian Low and Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli
12 Migrant Youth and Social Policy in Multicultural
Australia: Exploring Cross-Cultural Networking .............................. 185
Libby Effeney, Fethi Mansouri, and Maša Mikola
13 Multiculturalising at the Interface of Policy and Practice ................. 205
Martina Boese and Melissa Phillips
Index ................................................................................................................ 223

Part I
Histories and Politics of Multiculturalism
Chapter 1
The Multicultural Experiment:
Premises, Promises, and Problems
Fethi Mansouri
Abstract This introductory chapter reflects on current debates about the challenges
faced by multicultural societies in coming to grips with the interrelated societal
tasks of facilitating migrant settlement, nurturing cultural diversity and pursuing
inclusive citizenship. In doing so, the chapter will explore the development and
deployment of the concept of ‘multiculturalism’ from a comparative and historical
point of view and will proceed to discuss its key assumptions, achievements and
challenges. The chapter will also touch upon the key theoretical paradigms debated
in this book and will attempt to synthesise conceptually how its three sections inter-
connect dialectically and empirically.
Keywords Cultural diversity • Cosmopolitanism • Migration • Multiculturalism •

Social cohesion • Social justice • Human rights
Against an absence of new articulations of post-Westphalian approaches to citizen-

ship, the rise of human mobility is engendering, among other reactions, new forms
of inclusion/exclusion for ‘non-citizens’, ‘forced migrants’ and all those considered
‘outsiders’ (Agier 2011; Gibney 2004). These forms of exclusion are especially
pronounced in relation to the political community (state) where claims for cultural
rights, equality and active participation are made and contested by minoritised
‘Others’. Today across many émigré societies, minority groups in general and
migrant communities in particular are demanding greater accommodation of their
distinctive cultural identities as a way of enacting their aspirations for justice and
equality (Modood 2013; Vertovec 2010; Benhabib 2002; Barry 2001). So far the
consequential ethical dilemma and policy challenges have revolved around ways of
ensuring that such claims are sustained without the risk of engendering cultural
relativism, cultural ostracism, and the creation of segregated communities. The lat-
ter in particular is purported to carry within it the possible emergence of dual attach-
ments and a weakened sense of belonging to the wider society. Indeed, in much of
the contemporary literature on this subject it is increasingly argued (c.f. Modood
F. Mansouri (*)
Alfred Deakin Institute For Citizenship and Globalisation,
Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
e-mail: fethi.mansouri@deakin.edu.au
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 3

F. Mansouri (ed.), Cultural, Religious and Political Contestations,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16003-0_1
4 F. Mansouri
2013; Harris 2013; Steiner 2013; Mansouri and Lobo 2011; Vertovec and Wessendorf
2010) that one of the main difficulties facing multicultural societies is the extent to
which they are able to reconcile commitments for cultural diversity with securitised
social cohesion agenda. Put differently, how can pluralism at the cultural and reli-
gious levels be supported without the unwanted consequence of erecting new forms
of social exclusion, cultural racism and intercultural tensions?
Taken together, this book aims to address these inherent tensions and related
questions central to the ‘multicultural challenge’, with a focus on diversity and its
ethical and policy ramifications. This discussion will be undertaken not only hori-
zontally across a range of multicultural societies but also vertically within the
diverse cultural systems of minority groups themselves. To this end, the chapters in
this book tend to display an eclectic yet useful variation in theoretical, disciplinary
and methodological approaches. Some authors rely on abstract critical theoretical
analyses of how particular dimensions of diversity such as religion and sexual iden-
tity have been approached in specific political contexts. Others bring in more empir-
ical data-driven accounts of key challenges facing minoritised and at times
marginalised groups in their quest for social integration and cultural acceptance in
various social milieus.
Yet, in terms of its overall approach, the book charters a somewhat distinct epis-
temological pathway—to the growing literature on all matters multiculturalism—
by introducing three unique conceptual and methodological features. First, it brings
a much stronger empirical basis to discussions of multiculturalism, which have
tended to be rather abstract in much of the scholarly debates spanning various dis-
ciplinary traditions across the social sciences and humanities. Using such diverse
empirical foundations, the book’s various contributions usefully apply complex
theoretical concepts into prominent and carefully selected case studies. Second, the
book’s overall epistemological approach is overwhelmingly multidisciplinary. To
an extent, this contrasts to how multicultural debates have been approached and
tackled across the social sciences with a tendency for the single disciplinary tradi-
tion to provide the main conceptual framework. This volume incorporates well-
conceptualised contributions from education, sociology, cultural studies, philosophy
and political science. And in many cases, these differing disciplinary insights come
together in the same chapter providing a multi-faceted account to what is a complex
social phenomenon. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the book exhibits global
perspectives with empirical insights from multicultural societies in North America,
Australia, New Zealand and Europe included, even if the individual case studies
under examination in each of the book’s chapters are locally situated.
Against this theoretical and methodological variation, the overall arguments pur-
sued in this book and discussed briefly in this introductory chapter, relate to three
key contested domains in the broad multicultural question. First, the question of
premises, which will engage with the historical, philosophical and normative
foundations of the multicultural project that culminated in the formal adoption of a
suite of multicultural policies in Canada, Australia and subsequently other émigré
nation-states during the second half of the twentieth century. Second, this chapter
will reflect on the enduring promises of multiculturalism both as an ideal for recon-
1 The Multicultural Experiment: Premises, Promises, and Problems 5
ciling notions of justice, human rights and difference within liberal states, and as the
basis for social policies aimed at supporting migrant settlement through the preser-
vation of heritage culture. This particular feature of multiculturalism has attracted
deeply polarised debates (Mansouri and de B’beri 2014; Jupp and Clyne 2011)
about how such reconciliation should be pursued and the extent to which a liberal
interpretation of multiculturalism can tolerate certain group claims that might
simultaneously impinge upon rights of individual members of those very minority
groups. And it is within the third domain problems that we see many of these debates
being transformed into outright criticism and rejection of the basic assumptions
underlying multiculturalism namely an acceptance of and support for cultural diver-
sity. These three interrelated dimensions of the multicultural debate will be
approached in this volume not merely from abstract intellectual viewpoints, but
more importantly from comparative, transnational and empirical perspectives that
touch upon social policy, justice, human rights and education.
1.1 Premises of Multiculturalism
The deep philosophical foundations underpinning multiculturalism go a long way

back in history and certainly cannot be linked solely to the policies introduced in
Canada and Australia during the second half of the twentieth century (Taylor 2013;
Kymlicka 2010; Mansouri and Lobo 2011). Indeed, many old civilisations such as
the Egyptian and the Roman as well as medieval civilisations such as the Ottoman
Empire had to grapple in their own ways with cultural and religious diversity. In the
case of the Ottoman Empire for example, the central state had introduced social
policies, in particular the Millet system, to regulate and protect cultural rights and in
the process extend a degree of social justice to minorities within the larger empire
(c.f. Parekh 2005). This social contract within the Ottoman Empire rested on certain
obligations on the part of those making the claims, and corresponding rights
extended to them in return by the central state. In many ways, this arrangement was
akin to a modern citizenship approach with its emphasis on “contributory rights”
(Turner 2006). A few centuries later, and in his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace,
Immanuel Kant discussed similar ideas in terms of a cosmopolitan law/right that
would provide a guiding principle to protect people, especially during times of con-
flict, and this cosmopolitan right was to be grounded in the principle of universal
hospitality. Further to the foundational work of Kant, the philosophical writings of
Emmanuel Levinas (Davis 1996) on ethics, and Jacques Derrida (Still 2010) also on
hospitality, provided an even sharper theoretical framework for approaching and
understanding the relationships among (diverse) people in their everyday lives.
Indeed, for Levinas, the foundation of ethics consists in the obligation to respond
to the Other through a sense of responsibility, of “goodness” and “mercy” to over-
come the Other’s state of vulnerability. Likewise, Derrida (1978, 1997, 1999)
approaches this responsibility to “care” through a notion of “hospitality” as the
foundation of human ethics and as a readiness to welcome the Other into one’s
6 F. Mansouri
home. In this sense, ethics amounts to a pure and unconditional hospitality in our
relationships with the Other. These theoretical approaches to ethics and hospitality
hold out the possibility of an acceptance of the Other as different but of equal stand-
ing. Yet in contemporary societies such philosophical assumptions no longer seem
adequate to overcome the inherent tensions in relation to obligations extended to
individuals and groups who do not formally belong to a particular political com-
munity. Within the modern state, such dilemmas are conveniently dealt with under
the citizenship framework with its inclusionary and exclusionary capabilities. But
national citizenship approaches remain state-bound and are yet to embrace more
post-national and global agendas. Therefore and from a more contemporary approach
to cosmopolitanism, a key argument advocated by Appiah, among others, is that a
citizen of the world should neither “abjure all local allegiances and partialities in the
name of a vast abstraction humanity, nor should s/he take the nationalist position of
rejecting all foreigners” (in Lenz 2011: 415). In other words, a more sustainable
approach to such contested attachments, would be a partial or rooted cosmopolitan-
ism, which reflects the hybridity and intermingling of cultures whilst ensuring con-
tentious, cross-cultural dialogue and negotiation of difference within societies and
across nations (c.f. Appiah 2005; Delanty 2006; Kymlicka and Walker 2012).
But away from these quintessentially philosophical debates and intellectual dis-
courses, multiculturalism was thrust into the public arena in the wake of emergent
international human rights frameworks. These were reflected most notably in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Refugee Convention (1951) and
associated international instruments aimed at protecting minority rights from the
possible excesses of the nation-state and the social injustices perpetrated by domi-
nant groups. The call for intercultural understanding, social acceptance and mutual
respect for human dignity can be seen as the unintended promises of subsequent
multicultural articulations.
1.2 Promises of Multiculturalism
Linked to the notion of premises, the enduring promises of multiculturalism remain

at the level of incorporating migrants and newcomers into dominant mainstream
societies. Multiculturalism, in many ways, was conceived of as a vehicle for replac-
ing racist, assimilationist approaches to managing forms of ethnic and racial hierar-
chy within post-War Western societies. Indeed, as Kymlicka (2012: 3) argues,
From the 1970s to mid-1990s, there was a clear trend across Western democracies toward
the increased recognition and accommodation of diversity through a range of multicultural-
ism policies (MCPs) and minority rights. These policies were endorsed both at the domestic
level in some states and by international organizations, and involved a rejection of earlier
ideas of unitary and homogeneous nationhood.
Therefore, and at the level of social and, political and legal manifestation, the
multicultural promise was unequivocally about a promotion of empowerment,
justice and respect for all irrespective of cultural or religious backgrounds.
And the multicultural promise at this level was facilitated and anchored within
existing institutions of the émigré society most notably citizenship frameworks.
This articulation of multiculturalism in countries such as Australia (see Chaps. 5
and 12), Canada (see Chap. 4) or New Zealand (see Chaps. 3 and 7) has engendered
more positive than negative social outcomes despite the caricature portrayal of mul-
ticulturalism that has dominated media and some academic discourses. The early
and enduring promise of multiculturalism at this level can only be adequately
understood and appreciated when accounted for within its proper historical context.
Indeed, the multicultural promise should be seen as the third wave of global eman-
cipatory movements that started with decolonisation in the 1950s, followed by the
US-inspired civil rights movements in the 1960s, and culminating with a rejection
of assimilationist policies in favour of multiculturalism during the late 1960s and
early 1970s (Kymlicka 2012). At the heart of all of these transformative social
movements were ethical commitments to diversity, social justice and human rights
(Banting and Kymlicka 2013). Therefore, the so-called “retreat”, “crisis”, or “utter
failure” of multiculturalism elaborated further below, tended to be discussed almost
exclusively rhetorically rather than analytically, and often with no basis for objec-
tive inquiry or credible evidence.
1.3 The Perceived “Problems” of Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism has been debated and critiqued frequently at the turn of the twenty-first
century, with many theorists, public commentators and political leaders making various,
and at times contradictory, attempts to at least “rethink” it if not “abandon” or “reject”
it altogether. In the context of Europe in particular, and as Taylor (2012: 2) argues
[…] anti-multicultural rhetoric in Europe reflects a profound misunderstanding of the
dynamics of immigration into the rich, liberal democracies of the West. The underlying
assumption seems to be that too much positive recognition of cultural differences will
encourage a retreat into ghettos, and a refusal to accept the political ethic of liberal democ-
racy itself.
Yet others still argue for the need not only to preserve multiculturalism but to
align it even more strongly with its original functions and objectives, in particular in
relation to supporting migrant settlement and cultural diversity (c.f. Jakubowicz and
Ho 2013; Modood et al. 2006; Ivison 2010; Kymlicka and Bashir 2008). This return
to the core of the “multicultural ethos” can be pursued through a restatement of the
importance of its cosmopolitan tendencies. This task is even more pressing in the
context of cultural racism and xenophobia, which threatens the rights and safety of
some members of our contemporary societies in particular those adhering to the
Muslim faith.
But one of the key problems in the contemporary debate is that both proponents
and opponents of multiculturalism remain indifferent to the inherent tension
between multiculturalism as a socio-political ideology and multiculturalism as a
demographic reality in our globalised societies. The latter has historically presented
8 F. Mansouri
serious challenges to governments everywhere but particularly in Western émigré

societies where levels of cultural diversity are visibly high. The challenges relate to
how to accommodate such diversity with its underlying notion of “difference” as
articulated by migrant groups, while maintaining an overarching sense of belonging
to, and inclusion within, the society at large.
Some Western governments have adopted specific social policies to deal with
rising levels of diversity. Multiculturalism was conceived as just such a policy: a
progressive integration tool aimed at managing cultural diversity in a way that offers
some protection to migrants’ cultural rights. Some (e.g. Ivinson 2010) might argue
that this “protective” agenda contains within it the seeds of tension, as it lays the
foundations for a more communitarian approach to managing diversity. Perhaps it is
this communitarian manifestation that led to the fair amount of criticism since mul-
ticulturalism was introduced formally in the 1970s. At the philosophical level, the
criticism was related to the implicit cultural essentialism of multiculturalism and for
its perceived role in producing separatist “ethnic” enclaves. Tied to this, the leaders
of Germany, France, the UK and other countries have recently expressed strong
criticism of multiculturalism, which they declared as counterproductive to social
integration and in some instances as “an utter failure” (Mansouri and de B’beri
2014; Taylor 2012). Criticisms of cultural essentialism in multicultural policies
have been made even in countries known for their high levels of cultural diversity
and progressive social policies such as Canada and Australia. Furthermore, while
multiculturalism has addressed some key problems of unidirectional assimilation
and acculturation, the continuing expectations often made of migrants relating to
formal attachment and belonging have been left unchallenged.
Generally, multicultural policies did not take into account the fact that migrants
often live in “transnational communities” with transnational connections allowing
migrants to maintain collective identities and practices. These and other political
implications of transnationalism represent significant challenges to national citizen-
ship. To cater for these multiple identifications, alternative frameworks for citizenship
were explored and developed throughout the 1990s, such as post-national, multicul-
tural and intercultural citizenship. These will be discussed briefly under Sect. 1.3
below, but before that we need to explore some of the practical outcomes of a failed
policy towards the accommodation of cultural diversity in pluralist societies.
One of the most obvious problems that has resulted from this so-called crisis of
multiculturalism especially post 9/11, has been a sharp increase in identity politics
as well as more pronounced forms of racism towards specific cultures and faith
communities, especially Muslims (Mansouri and Marotta 2012). Because of the
prominence of security concerns in the media and the false association of a whole
religion with violence, current debates about citizenship in Europe, North America
and elsewhere have become disoriented and confuse cultural and religious diversity
with terrorism threats and other security risks.
It is at this level that new calls for adopting “forced” assimilation policies are
being articulated once again with a complete disregard towards the basic recogni-
tion of individual rights and group claims especially when these relate to culture
and faith. In the following section, a brief outline of the book structure and the
individual contributions from various theoretical and empirical perspectives will

allow a more nuanced examination for these tensions in the context of differing
historical, social and political contexts.
1.4 Book Structure
1.4.1 Part I: Histories and Politics of Multiculturalism
The first section of the book provides a deep contextual and conceptual context for
the current predicament of the multicultural experience. Kivisto, writing about mul-
ticultural inclusion and national identity in the US, argues that the very concept of
multiculturalism is a mode of incorporation predicated on the core values of liberal
societies. Part of Kivisto’s argument is to remind those who have contributed to the
backlash against multiculturalism, that multiculturalism is not a means for promot-
ing group- or self-segregation, nor for advancing an “anything goes” sort of cultural
relativism. For Kivisto, multiculturalism is premised on the moral assertion that
solidarity at the level of the societal community (or nation) can be achieved and that
simultaneously difference (ethnic and religious) can be recognized and embraced.
The argument mounted by Kivisto, is that multiculturalism is viable, even if not
inevitable, and that its future will be shaped by the outcome of political contestation
between its defenders and critics.
Focusing on the tension between these two camps in the context of New Zealand,
Morris recounts a recent Cologne District Court decision (2012) to ban the circum-
cision of male minors and examines the responses from Muslim and Jewish com-
munities, governments, and NGOs. As is often the case with these attacks on diverse
cultural practices, Morris argues that these debates, clothed as they are in the poli-
tics of competing human rights and professional medical and legal discourses,
reveal hidden dimensions of prejudicial cultural, legal and political norms that serve
to restrict the freedoms of minority communities. Morris discusses these problem-
atic discourses and examines their inadequacy in comprehending religious com-
munities and their practices in contemporary multicultural and formally “secular”
societies. The problem has been and remains a lack of a more nuanced and plausible
framework for the appreciation of the formation of intergenerational religious iden-
tities. Morris calls for the adoption of a “new” model of cultural human rights,
determined at the level of the individual rather than the collective: focussed on a
child’s right to full participation in a religious community along with the implica-
tions this may have for our understanding the nexus between multiculturalism and
human rights.
Discussing the links between cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism and universal-
ism, Imbert engages with Appiah’s work on cosmopolitanism as (put simply “uni-
versality plus difference […]”) to examine the challenge of cultural accommodation
within multicultural societies. The problem for Imbert is that multiculturalism has
always engaged with the question of acknowledging difference, but not the question
10 F. Mansouri
of universalism. Imbert finds that multiculturalism is not grounded in a universalism

found in the value system of a group that imposed its hegemony through belittling
or excluding others: this mistake often leads to a dynamic of resentment in the
encounter among “hosts” and “Others”. Resentment, as discussed by Imbert,
Modood, Kymlicka and others, is characterised by displacement and the impossibil-
ity to belong or change. This is an important and often unseen dimension of multi-
culturalism that needs to be analysed more thoroughly; particularly it’s potential to
blend with established resentments shaping the economic and political landscape of
the new society where immigrants settle. Some of these problems are analysed in
more details in the second section of the book dealing with multiculturalism in key
societal domains.
1.4.2 Part II: Justice and Education as Key Dimensions

of Multiculturalism
Disenchantment, a concept not too dissimilar to Imbert’s idea of “resentment”, is

taken up by Grossman, who draws on Paul Gilroy’s work on multicultures and con-
viviality, as a framing concept for ethical sociality. Grossman uses this framing
concept to examine how contemporary approaches to engaging communities in the
effort to mitigate violent extremism and terrorism might productively be reshaped.
Drawing on recent research into community perspectives on radicalisation, extrem-
ism and terrorism, Grossman explores Gilroy’s analysis of the “citizen/denizen”
discourse as this plays out in current approaches to engaging Australian Muslim and
other communities around issues of extremism and terrorism: focusing in particular
on the realm of counter-narrative discourses and their aftermaths—which counter-
narratives are heard, which aren’t and what stories have yet to be told? Grossman’s
central argument is that the current structure and trajectories of counter-terrorism
narratives limit their efficacy. There is a real need, instead, to open up counter-
narrative strategy to multiple micro-narratives that work with the commonalities
and overlaps found in Gilroy’s notion of “convivial culture”; this direction offers
better and more enduring prospects for counter-terrorism and the future conditions
of multiculturalism.
Roose and Possamai’s contribution touches on two important and critical issues
pertaining to the “crisis of multiculturalism”. First, the extent to which there is a real
policy “retreat in multiculturalism” as opposed to a mere rhetorical “backlash”
inadvertently amplified by excessive media and academic attention. Second, they
examine this question in the context of the recent debate around legal pluralism in
western societies and in particular the case of “Shari’a” in Australia. The challenge
here is that the growing numbers of Muslim migrants living in supposedly secular
cities, will eventually lay claims to a form of religious accommodation that reflects
jurisprudence principles articulated within Islamic Law. This conundrum has
become known in the literature as the “twin tolerations” question (Stepan 2000: 8)
pertaining to “the minimum degree of toleration democracy needs from religion and
the minimum degree of toleration that religion needs from the state for the polity to
be democratic”.
Moving away from these discourses of contestations, resentment, disenchant-
ment, and counter-terrorism, Rata engages critically with culturalist and postcolo-
nial theories to explore the idea of “localised knowledges” as a decolonising and
liberating tool confronting disciplinary “Western” cultural knowledge. Rata argues
that this approach often confuses the historical origins of knowledge with its episte-
mological status. She reminds us that young people who are denied access to power-
ful disciplinary knowledge in the belief that such knowledge is “Western” are denied
both the means to move beyond experience and the means with which to criticise
and change the localised world of experience, i.e. culture. Rata’s fear is that these
young individuals are left in the binaries of “self” and “other”, “colonised” and
“coloniser”, “ethnic” and “Western”; reified and ahistorical categories that confine
them to the world of experience and deny them the means to transcend the limits of
culture. Rata argues strongly that a way forward for multiculturalism is to ensure
that young people in pluralist societies have access to the powerful disciplinary
knowledge required for educational success while at the same time being able to
maintain or eschew cultural affiliation with the historical ethnic group as they wish.
Tsolidis, on the other hand, discusses neoliberalism as a driver of education in
many émigré societies, and its potential effects on the promises of multicultural
society. Within neoliberal approaches to education, the logic of the market is applied
and parents are positioned as consumers with the responsibility of choosing the
right school for their children. For Tsolidis, when markets and school choice are
critical educational drivers, ethnicity takes on new meaning in marking some stu-
dents as more or less desirable. This can be seen for example for “Asian” students
who are often represented as extremely diligent and policed by overly ambitious
parents who pay more attention to their academic achievements than their overall
development and happiness. This understanding of “Asian” students has been
fuelled by exposés of so-called “Tiger mothers”. Yet despite their reputed academic
prowess, these students have been seen as a trigger for “white flight”. Tsolidis
reveals that having a high percentage of “Asian” students is understood as a threat
to the culture of a school premised on the virtues of an all-rounded liberal education.
The character of the student population is critical to the market ethos that dominates
education. With regard to the constitution of a “good” school, some ethnicities are
seen as more valuable than others because they achieve good results. However, if
high-achieving “non-white” students are seen as “taking over” a school this can
shift the balance the other way. Tsolidis builds her analysis on current debates in the
Australian media about school choice and explores this coverage as a means for
understanding exclusion and racisms in the education sector.
Shifting the debate to continental Europe, Armillei discusses multiculturalism
and the management of cultural diversity in Italy, focusing on the case of the Romani
gypsy community. Armillei examines the policies of the Italian government towards
the Romani community in the interrelated spheres of education and social justice;
reminding us that these policies have also been deployed when dealing with other
marginalised migrant communities. Presenting an analysis of the via Italiana
12 F. Mansouri
(the “Italian way”) of promoting intercultural education, Armillei’s appraisal of

current policies reveals an essentially ethnocentric and assimilative approach to
educational and social policies that positions the majority/dominant group as the
point of departure and end for managing cultural diversity in Italy.
Moving away from these substantive issues of justice and education, the follow-
ing section provides reflections on the more performative dimensions of multicul-
tural belonging. Such performativity relates more specifically to spatial practices of
everyday life; multicultural sexuality and cross-cultural networking.
1.4.3 Part III: Performing Multicultural Belongings
What does it mean to come of age in an era of anti-multiculturalism? How does such
an environment shape the ways young people of diverse backgrounds come to feel “at
home”—in the nation, in the city, in their neighbourhoods, and in their national iden-
tity? Discussing findings from her study of youth in the multicultural suburbs of five
Australian cities, Harris explores how the politics of belonging is lived through the
spatial practices of everyday civic life for those who have grown up during the multi-
culturalism backlash of the 1990s and 2000s. Harris finds that despite these conditions
young people position themselves at the forefront of reimaging national belonging—
their practices are more indicative of the successes of multiculturalism’s legacy in
everyday spaces, which the more popularised discourse of its failures obscures.
Low and Pallotta-Chiarolli, on the other hand, argue that post-White Australia,
Australia’s multicultural policies and community action enabled its culturally and
linguistically diverse population of migrants and refugees from non-Anglo-Celtic
background to gain citizenship rights. Yet, absent from these multicultural histories
are multicultural gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Australian narratives. Low
and Pallotta-Chiarolli argue that in 2014, there still exists the silencing of sexual and
gender diversities in heterosexist multicultural discourses, community spaces and
services. The authors ask whether “reclaiming multiculturalism” can sit comfortably
and confidently with “global citizenship and ethical engagement with diversity”
without engaging with and including sexual and gender diverse histories, heritages
and contemporary realities. Low and Pallotta-Chiarolli address this question by
exploring three examples of how the reclaiming of multicultural queer histories and
contemporary realities is occurring as part of refashioning a multiculturalism that
engages with diversity. First, they present the work being done to uncover and
recover pre-colonial and pre-Christian histories and heritages; second, they discuss
the work of ILGA (International Lesbian and Gay Association) and AGMC
(Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural Council) in addressing the rights of multi-faith,
multicultural GLBTIQ peoples and communities. Third, they examine the Asian-
Australian publication, Peril and related examples of other Asian-Australian/multi-
cultural literary media that represent multi-sexual multi-gender realities.
Focussing more explicitly on cross-cultural networking among migrant youth,
Effeney, Mansouri and Mikola explore the extent to which the direction of official
Multicultural and Social Inclusion policies in Australia reflects the social attitudes
and networking practices of migrant youth. The chapter pays particular attention to
the Federal Government’s “Anti-Racism Strategy”, announced in 2012 as part of its
Multicultural Policy. On a theoretical level, direct efforts to mitigate racism have the
potential to augment strategies that reaffirm pluralism and address disadvantage
often associated with the migrant experience. To explore the extent to which such
top-level discourses have empirical founding in the social lives of migrant youth,
Effeney, Mansouri and Mikola draw on data collected from a longitudinal research
project on social networks, belonging and active citizenship among migrant youth.
Their findings suggest that there is a persistent tendency among migrant youth to
point to their social distance from Australians of Anglo origins who are perceived
as symbolising Australia’s mainstream—representing an inclusion/exclusion binary
constructed along racialised lines that persists today. The migrant youth surveyed in
this study point to a number of instances of racism that weaken their overall feelings
of belonging. These manifestations of racial discrimination can preclude the emer-
gence of a genuinely inclusive society that supports and nurtures cultural diversity
as a significant part of the Australian national identity.
This section, and indeed the book, concludes with the contribution of Boese and
Phillips who discuss multiculturalism in Australia as a contemporary policy frame-
work and practice that has been the subject of sustained criticism and debate. They
focus on the resettlement experiences of newly arrived migrants and refugees to
show how Australian multiculturalism has become a limited symbolic cultural
space where “ethnic Others” are permitted to display their minority ethnicity to the
white ethnic majority group. They argue that the official and public meanings of
multiculturalism today remain constrained by its past, specifically the historical
legacy of White Australia and the contested but still entrenched remnants of the
term “assimilation”. As a result, new arrivals and existing cultural “Others” are
expected to gradually “blend in”; a euphemism that in effect veils a form of cultural
assimilation. This process occurs at the expense of acknowledging the everyday
realities of cultural diversity, and the possibilities for a more proactive, reciprocal
and ongoing cultural, political and social exchange within and between all diverse
communities of Australia. Boese and Phillips argue that a more transformational
form of multiculturalism has emerged, termed “(re)multiculturalisation”. (Re)mul-
ticulturalising, in this regard, points to a multi-layered process and seeks to
encapsulate some of the ways in which multiculturalism operates within Australia
today across a variety of public and private settings.
1.5 Conclusion
It is perhaps heuristically not very helpful to describe and discuss “multicultural-

ism” in terms of “failure”, “retreat” and “rejection”, nor should this contested term
be paraded as an all-encompassing solution to all that is ill with modern societies.
In fact, neither its “protective” claims vis-à-vis migrants not its “liberal”
14 F. Mansouri
expectations from majoritarian groups are sufficient to provide conclusive argu-

ments in the ongoing debate about cultural claims of minority groups.
This is why this book is not simply about multiculturalism as a social policy tool
aimed at supporting migrant social integration and engendering broader social har-
mony. Nor is it about multiculturalism as conduit for dealing with more complex
cultural diversity often linked to migrants and minority groups with different cul-
tural and religious backgrounds. These issues listed above are indeed very impor-
tant to our societies and worthy of dedicated volumes that explicitly examine their
many diverse applications and implications. This book, however, is concerned with
how individual human beings living in increasingly globalised cities are able to
develop a multitude of attachments: to their heritage culture; to their national politi-
cal community; to a globalised human society; and to a set of universal values that
transcend the boundaries of the nation-state (Kymlicka and Walker 2012; Beck
2011). It is this multi-faceted engagement that often results in tension at the per-
sonal, national, transnational and global levels. Yet, human beings, throughout
human history (Parekh 2005) have exhibited an unrivalled capacity to overcome and
to prevail over such difficulties. What will be the exact future of multiculturalism in
diverse societies is not perhaps the most critical question. Rather, a more inherently
intriguing question relates to how multiculturalism and its many related concepts
(cosmopolitanism, interculturalism; transculturalism) will evolve as they are cri-
tiqued, challenged, contested, reshaped and even reclaimed. Indeed, the premises,
promises and problems of multiculturalism are the very characteristics that will
ensure the concept will endure one way or another because it is an empirical impos-
sibility to slow it down let alone reverse the cross-cultural encounter.
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Chapter 2
Multicultural Inclusion Confronts Questions
of National Identity
Peter Kivisto
Abstract This chapter examines the role of national identity in shaping the
prospects for multiculturalism—a topic that has received surprisingly little attention
in the scholarly literature on multiculturalism thus far. It does so by examining the
US immigrant experience, with the underlying assumption that its response to
diversity should be viewed as but one variant of a common experience in contempo-
rary liberal democracies.
Keywords Assimilation • Liberal nationalism • Multiculturalism • Monoculturalism

• National identity • Nationalism • Social solidarity
In her posthumously published Responsibility for Justice, Iris Marion Young (2011:
120) observed that, “As a term and a concept, solidarity need not connote homoge-
neity or symmetry among those in relations. Some people use the term to imply
identification with others or the unity of a group, but such usages can and should be
challenged”. Rather, she contends, “solidarity is a relationship among separate and
dissimilar actors who decide to stand together for one another”. As such, it stands in
contrast to common origins, which is an inherited relationship rather than one that
must be created.
Jeffrey C. Alexander (2006; see also 1997, 2001, 2013), the preeminent theorist
of solidarity today, would clarify Young’s contention by observing that in the real
world, although homogeneity “need not” define solidarity it definitely does in many
instances. Indeed, in his work, which builds on a line of thought rooted in Durkheim
and Parsons, he contends that an inevitable and inherent tension exists between
parochial and civil modes of solidarity. Moreover, the two do not exist in a neat
symmetrical relationship, insofar as parochial solidarity appears as a “natural” form
P. Kivisto (*)
Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Welfare, Augustana College,
Rock Island, IL, USA
e-mail: peterkivisto@augustana.edu

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16003-0_2
18 P. Kivisto
of belonging, rooted in the givens of biology, history, and/or tradition, while civil
solidarity is seen as existing, when it does and to the extent that it does, as an emer-
gent and aspirational phenomenon.
In modern societies, characterized by increasing levels of diversity, one of the
central issues that needs to be addressed concerns the willingness of core groups to
expand the boundaries of what Alexander calls the “civil sphere” in a manner that
permits heretofore marginalized and excluded groups to move from the periphery to
the centre. This, in a nutshell, constitutes what Alexander understands incorporation
to entail. What is distinctive about a multicultural mode of incorporation, in contrast
to assimilation and what he calls “ethnic hyphenation”, is that it permits outsiders to
enter into the civil sphere with their “polluted qualities” intact, rather than requiring
them to park those qualities in the private realm. This is made possible insofar as the
core group engages in a process of revaluation of outsider qualities, which are no
longer viewed with disgust, but rather as meriting respect (Alexander 2006: 450–57;
see also, Seidman 2013). Whereas assimilation and ethnic hyphenation amount to
treating the particular qualities of the core group as expressions of the universal (see
Chap. 4 for more on this point), multiculturalism is predicated on the assumption
that the various particularities of distinct groups, both from the core and the periph-
ery, must be recognized if a more universal solidarity based on a common humanity
is to be possible. When this occurs, nobody remains quite the same in the process.
Moreover, the cultures of both core and outsider groups do not remain unchanged as
a result of an ongoing dialogue across difference predicated on mutual respect.
Assimilation, ethnic hyphenation, and multiculturalism are ideal types, and in
the real world, they can be found in mixes reflecting the distinctive features of vari-
ous societies (Alexander 2006: 256). In this regard, it is necessary to recognize the
fact that whichever mode of incorporation is advanced, this occurs within the
boundaries of the nation-state; where national identity confronts and must be related
to a range of identities based on factors such as class, race, religion, gender, sexual
identity, and region. With this in mind, this chapter examines what I consider to be
a topic that has not received the attention it merits, namely the role of national iden-
tity in shaping the prospects for multiculturalism. It does so by examining the US
immigrant experience, with the underlying assumption that its response to diversity
should be viewed as but one variant of a common experience in contemporary lib-
eral democracies.
David Hollinger (2006: 23–24) considers solidarity to be “shaping up as the
problem of the twenty-first century”, and paralleling Young and Alexander’s empha-
sis on choice, he contends that solidarity can be “an experience of willed affilia-
tion”, one that he characterizes as “active” and “performative”. Like Alexander
however, he sees this type of solidarity vying with a less voluntaristic type in which
“communities of fate” often witness solidarity within the ranks based on homogene-
ity. Problems arise, he contends, when people begin to question the bases of collec-
tive identity by asking “who are ‘we’?” The act of asking is a reflection of feelings
of deep unease—of anxiety about what the answer might be, an anxiety that those
who are, as Hollinger (2006: 25) puts it, “supremely confident” about those collec-
tivities to which they are attached and those they are free from.
2 Multicultural Inclusion Confronts Questions of National Identity 19
2.1 Who Are We?
Given the way Hollinger posed the question, Samuel Huntington’s (2004) last
publication, Who Are We?, will no doubt come to mind. This is a work that Alan
Wolfe (2004: 2) characterized as “Patrick Buchanan with footnotes”. Similar assess-
ments have been offered by many others, and insofar as this is true, one might ask
whether there is anything to be gained by rehashing the book. I would argue that it
is worth yet another examination, not simply in order to analyse it as a piece of
flawed scholarship, but to read it as a reflection of unease about the state of national
solidarity. Put another way, it can be read to glean insights into the underlying
dynamics of the fear experienced by an unabashed nationalist (Huntington described
himself “as a patriot and a scholar” in the volume’s preface).
His motivation for writing the book revolved around two perceived threats: to the
security of the US and to its national identity. Given that it was written shortly after
9/11 and that for many in the west who have endorsed his “clash of civilizations”
argument the immediate challenge at hand was depicted as a contemporary parallel
to the centuries earlier threat of “barbarians at the gates of Vienna”, one might have
assumed that the security challenges foremost on his mind would be those posed by
militant Islamists. Yet this is not the case, for what preoccupies him is the presence
of increasingly large numbers of Hispanic immigrants, with Mexican immigrants
being seen as most significant due to their sheer numbers.
Central to his argument is the claim that from its founding up to the present
America has been defined in terms of an Anglo-Protestant culture, stressing that he
is not talking about any particular people, but about a particular culture. Despite this
focus on a distinctive culture, Huntington rather curiously does little to describe
either the origins or the content of Anglo-Protestant culture. He does point repeat-
edly to a historical linkage between what he refers to as dissenting Protestantism
and the American Creed. However, he reveals no appreciation of the implications of
the fact that from the beginning, the British Protestants who played such an instru-
mental role in shaping a new national culture were comprised of widely divergent
groups with often competing and contradictory values, as David Hackett Fischer’s
(1989) now classic study attests. Though he cites this work, Huntington (2004: 42)
glosses over the differences in order to conclude that they forged a “common cul-
ture”; by which he means a homogeneous, singular culture. He also fails to consider
that competing cultural values might exist as a result of the development of what
Rogers Smith (1993) has termed “multiple traditions” that have arisen as a conse-
quence of a variety of non-egalitarian ideologies. Likewise, he fails to make clear
precisely what he means by the “American Creed”.
As to cultural contents, nowhere does Huntington develop a sustained analysis.
He observes that Americans are inclined to see good and evil in stark dichotomous
terms, value individualism, support the work ethic, embrace moralistic values, and
harbour notions of social reform only insofar as they are tied to the transformation
of individuals. Despite this sketchiness, he is prepared to assert without qualifica-
tion that this culture has been “remarkably stable” over time (2004: 67). It had
20 P. Kivisto
managed to be so despite the huge migratory wave extending from 1880 to 1924.
Given the substantial increase in the size of the Catholic and Jewish populations
during this Great Migration, one might have expected Huntington to characterize
the impact of these newcomers as eroding the hegemony of Anglo-Protestant cul-
ture, resulting in a recasting of national identity to one that was at once more inclu-
sive, and in terms of the significance attributed to national origin and religion, less
particularistic. In his reading of that history, however, it is the immigrants alone who
changed by adapting and embracing the existing national culture without in any
significant way transforming it. In short, they assimilated, if assimilation meant that
they simply abandoned their old world cultures, replacing them with that of the new
world. In the case of Catholics, it meant that they abandoned Roman Catholicism
for something Huntington (2004: 92) calls without elaboration “American
Catholicism” (on the nexus between religion, nation and multicultural politics see
Chaps. 3, 4, and 6). Presumably, this new form of Catholicism constituted a trans-
valuation of a religious belief system sufficient to render it a parallel institution to
the panoply of Protestant denominations.
If this is an accurate reading of the US’s past, it would be reasonable to conclude
that a nation so capable of absorbing immigrants without appreciable change to the
existing national culture would be able to do so again today. This ought to be espe-
cially true of the largest immigrant population in the US; particularly since Mexicans
are overwhelmingly Catholic. Huntington, however, finds the presence of such a
large number of Mexican immigrants deeply troubling, and it’s not because of their
impact on the economy or competition with natives over jobs, housing, and so forth.
Rather, they are seen as posing a clear and present danger to the capacity of the
nation to maintain its core Anglo-Protestant cultural identity. The source of the
problem with Mexicans can be simply attributed to their “culture of Catholicism”, a
term that Huntington uses but fails to define. Given that the Irish, Italians, and Poles
arrived in the country during an earlier era with similar cultures of Catholicism, and
they ended up, in his view, becoming American Catholics, why does Huntington
think that Mexicans won’t follow the same pattern of inclusion?
The answer he offers is that they are refusing to assimilate and are being encour-
aged to refuse by advocates of multiculturalism. Whereas in the past the receiving
society’s sole accepted mode of incorporation was presumed to be assimilation,
today the goal of assimilation is being challenged by an ideology that seeks to deni-
grate Anglo-Protestant culture. Huntington (2004: 171) regards multiculturalism as
“basically an anti-Western ideology”, that argues that “justice, equality, and rights
of minorities demand that [their] suppressed cultures be liberated and that govern-
ments and private institutions encourage and support their revitalization. America is
not and should not be a society with a single national culture”.
Critics of Huntington have faulted him for what they see as his chauvinism in
defence of a version of nationalism that preserves the cultural hegemony of White
Anglo-Saxon Protestants (the WASP), the nation’s charter group. Eric Kaufmann
(2004) contends, however, that he is a civic and not an ethnic nationalist. While the
culture persists, it is seen as available to newcomers, who can become members of the
societal community insofar as they are willing to embrace its cultural heritage—and,
of course, in the process, abandon their own. This is what he means by distinguishing
between the people who make up the composite population of the nation and its
shared, unified national culture. His fear is that a very large immigrant population
today is refusing to enter into this bargain, encouraged by multiculturalism’s spokes-
persons, who can be found both within segments of the leadership stratum of immi-
grant groups and within the ranks of liberal elites in the host society. In this, his view
of how solidarity is achieved at least implicitly parallels that of Young, Alexander,
and Hollinger insofar as he considers it to be a matter of volition.
From Huntington’s perspective, there is no prospect of maintaining solidarity
with one’s ethnic group and simultaneously becoming an American (unless, of
course, the group in question is the core WASP group). It is an either/or proposition.
Solidarity is, in effect, a zero sum game. To the extent that people remain attached
to ethnic group identities, they will continue to be detached from full immersion in
the national culture. It’s a matter of choice, and thus if Mexicans resist becoming
American on cultural terms that presumably crystallized fairly early in the nine-
teenth century, they have only themselves to blame for their continued marginaliza-
tion. They are agents shaping their own lives, and from his perspective as scholar
patriot, they are making the wrong decision.
A curious feature of his account is that he never takes seriously the fact that
members of the host society are also agents with the capacity to determine to some
extent who does and who does not become—to use the language of Talcott Parsons
(2007)—full members of the “societal community”. In a section of the book devoted
to white nativism, Huntington (2004: 310–11) borrows from what he refers to as a
“neutral” definition of nativism as entailing opposition to minority groups on the
basis of their “foreign (i.e., ‘un-American’) connections”, adding to that description
opposition to blacks as not truly a part of American society and to minority groups
that it is believed might become a majority. He is at pains to distinguish the vast
majority of white nativists from extremists such as members of the KKK or the
Aryan Nation, and offers a sympathetic portrait of those who perceive the presence
of a large Hispanic population as constituting a “threat to their language, culture,
and power […]” (Huntington 2004: 316).
He never takes into consideration the possibility that the actions of nativists
can deter newcomers from opting into US society by creating a toxic environment
for them, one that makes clear that they are not welcome and that places various
impediments to their incorporation. Prejudice, discrimination (both individual
and institutional), stereotyping, scapegoating, and the like are simply not factored
into his narrative of forging and sustaining national identity. Thus, he is incapable
of explaining the differential barriers to incorporation confronting various ethnic
groups—failing to appreciate the contrast between those for whom the issues of
race and/or religion loom large versus those for whom these aspects of ethnic
identity have proven to be less salient as handicaps to inclusion. There are two
key problems with Huntington’s account. The first has to do with the inadequacy
of his description of the process by which newcomers and their offspring adjust
and adapt to their new homeland. The second concerns his static depiction of
national culture.
22 P. Kivisto
2.2 Incorporation as a Social Process
Turning to the first shortcoming, what we know about the immigrant experience is
that, as Robert Merton (1976: 11–2) has pointed out, it is one of those paradigmatic
examples of ambivalence, situations where a social role contains “conflicting nor-
mative expectations”, a consequence of having “lived in two or more societies and
so have become oriented to differing sets of cultural values”. I would simply note
first that this is a dual ambivalence: for immigrants are often ambivalent about both
their ethnic group and the receiving society. Second, a resolution to ambivalence is
often not accomplished during the lifetimes of the immigrant generation, but rather
occurs as homeland ties and familiarity with its culture becomes more attenuated for
subsequent generations.
How should we understand incorporation into the receiving society as a social
process? In the first place, it involves both immigrants and natives. Second, it is a
process with a political dimension that has often not received the attention that it
merits in US scholarship—from the Chicago School to recent work on boundaries
by Richard Alba and others. It is with this in mind that it’s worth examining the
argument that Roger Waldinger (2007, 2008, 2011) has been advancing for the past
several years, which can be read as a call to recognize the role of the state in deter-
mining who is permitted to become members of the societal mainstream and under
what parameters. He stresses that borders matter and states are the arbiters of who
has a legitimate right to cross their borders—either to exit or to enter—and who does
not, and in the case of the receiving society, in determining who will and who
will not be given the opportunity to become a member of the national community.
Meanwhile, the citizenry expresses its views about the expectations it has for new-
comers to prove themselves as worthy and loyal members of the polity. Succinctly
put, “States seek to bound the societies they enclose: they strive to regulate member-
ship in the national collectivity as well as movement across territorial borders, often
using illiberal means to fulfil liberal ends” (Waldinger 2007: 343).1 Taking issue
with the portrayal of the global economy as borderless when it comes to would-be
migrants seeking to improve their lives, he points to the fact that states are willing
to go to extraordinary lengths to control their borders in the interest of preventing
unwanted migrants from “crashing the gates” (2007: 346). The contemporary immi-
gration policies of the US, like those of every other liberal democracy, are exclu-
sionary—seeking to preserve the binary divide between insiders and outsiders.
This leads to his understanding of the role of the state vis-à-vis those on the
inside. The overarching state interest remains the same: to maintain control over a
population. In the case of those residing within the boundaries of the nation, the state
seeks to “cage” that population, “constraining social ties beyond the territorial divide,
while reorienting activities toward the interior” (Waldinger 2008: 9). Viewing
migration as first and foremost a political phenomenon, he contends that states strive
to transform foreigners into nationals. Unlike assimilation as it is conventionally
1
See Chap. 10 for an account of the micro politics of migrant belonging, situated, as it is, within
these larger state and societal processes aimed at defining the parameters of nationhood.
understood, which stresses the decline of the ethnic factor and the entry of newcomers
over time into the societal mainstream, Waldinger (2007: 347) describes the
transformation as a form of “political resocialization”. Assimilation entails the
emergence of new patterns of relatedness between newcomers and established resi-
dents in which the former are brought into the orbit of the latter’s social world, in
some instances on more-or-less equal terms and in other instances in segmented
fashion. Being transformed into a national of the receiving society involves acquir-
ing an identity that makes people insiders, a process that simultaneously distin-
guishes them from outsiders, including citizens of their former homeland. This
happens regardless of whether the newcomers end up in the societal mainstream or
on the margins.
The internal and external aspects of national identity need not necessarily oper-
ate according to the same ideological script. Waldinger thinks that at present the US
is becoming increasingly inclusive internally, while remaining externally exclusive.
This was not always so, for historically the nation was exclusive both internally and
externally, the former being seen most obviously in the extended effort to exclude
African Americans from full societal membership, first during slavery and then dur-
ing the Jim Crow era. Internal exclusivity shaped perceptions of national identity,
defined in terms of race (white), ethnic origin (Anglo-Saxon), and religion
(Protestant). This led to demands for newcomers to assimilate by shedding their
pasts and transforming themselves into WASP clones. This prospect differentiated
European-origin ethnics from blacks and other racial minorities insofar as only in
the case of the former was it possible to “become white”. That the cultural elites of
earlier periods of American history were confident about their capacity to so trans-
form immigrants, for an extended period from the founding of the republic up to the
beginning of the twentieth century, when a more pessimistic view of the incorpora-
tive capacity of the nation took hold, the nation’s immigration laws were inclusive
in terms of religion and national origin. Waldinger does not spend time addressing
shifts in immigration laws, because his central point is simply that once national
identity took shape, so too did the distinction between citizens and aliens.
While this particular binary has not changed over time, the internal change that
has transpired over the course of the past century has resulted in a pluralistic render-
ing of national identity in which ethnic groups have come to be seen as a legitimate
part of the political and cultural landscape. At the same time, Waldinger concurs
with David Hollinger’s (1995) post-ethnic America thesis, which stresses the
options people have in regard to ethnic attachments, ranging from distancing to
embracing. The result is that the nation has witnessed a shift from internal exclusiv-
ity in the past to inclusivity, but one in which the significance of individualism tends
to preclude the possibility of the hardening of ethnic group affiliations and alle-
giances. Put another way, ethnic pluralism has been recognized at the same time that
its salience has declined, particularly vis-à-vis national identity. The result is liberal
nationalism, which ought to be viewed as the “doctrine best suited to the normal,
multicultural America of the early twenty-first century, and therefore the view most
likely to be internalized by the new and candidate Americans of our times”
(Waldinger 2007: 347).
24 P. Kivisto
In Waldinger’s sketchy discussions, he, at least implicitly, describes the current

situation in terms of states and citizens mutually reinforcing any particular stance on
newcomers. Yet, the reality is more complex since democratic states do not act in an
environment free from internal tensions and conflicts, and the opinions of citizens
are inevitably divided. Perhaps a starting point for a richer empirical perspective
might derive from an assessment offered by the late John Higham (1994: 1289),
who while viewing the nation-state as an entity that “will remain for a long time the
strongest political structure in the world”, nevertheless considered it to be “under
siege” with “the abounding trust it once enjoyed eroding”, the net result being that
though strong it is “less capable of dominating the subgroups within their boundar-
ies”. This viewpoint offers a corrective to Waldinger’s account insofar as it accords
the social its due in relation to the strictly political and it grants a level of agency to
ordinary people—both citizens and immigrants/ethnics—who have the capacity to
question the legitimacy of the state and the justness of its policies and actions, and
can therefore potentially undermine, subvert, or resist its capacity to “cage”. But
this, of course, cuts both ways since those citizens most hostile to newcomers and
diversity can pressure the state to enact more, rather than less, repressive measures.
If I read the history of American immigration and the integration of migrants into
the society’s mainstream correctly, while some newcomers have been prepared to
abandon old world ways entirely (at least as much as they could muster) and others
have resisted the lure of the receiving society and worked hard to remain unpolluted
from its culture, most have sought to negotiate the terms of incorporation. They
have, as John Bodnar’s (1987) synthetic account of the Great Migration argued,
done so pragmatically. They have often been prepared to comply with the expecta-
tions and demands of both the state and majority population in many arenas of
everyday life, but at the same time they have been prepared to make demands of
their own in an effort to play a role in defining their distinctive version of American
identity. These varied narratives have generally sought to find room to some extent
for the persistence of elements of the ethnic factor.
2.3 National Identity and Expanding the Boundaries

of Inclusion
Elsewhere I (2012) have argued that multiculturalism ought to be viewed as a form

of claims-making, expanding on Giuseppe Sciortino’s (2003: 264) argument that
multicultural claims constitute “political claims expressed by actors on behalf of a
social category”. The actors in question are the more or less legitimate representa-
tives of the category in question, in this case ethnic and other marginalized groups,
and are generally individuals who hold leadership roles within their respective
groups. What Sciortino broadly termed a social category, I prefer to call a commu-
nity of fate (recall that this is also the term used by Hollinger), and contend further
that the claims revolve around concerns about the fate of the community and well as
its place in the national imaginary. Although a precise definition of the term
“community of fate” does not exist, for our purposes it will suffice to note that one
is typically born into this sort of community involuntarily and that members of the
community experience various levels of marginalization and stigmatization. They
understand the individual and the group as involved in, to borrow from Michael
Dawson (1994) a “linked fate”.
Claims-making takes place within the public spaces afforded by liberal democra-
cies, where efforts can be made to mobilize support in the court of public opinion.
But claims-making is also directed at the state, for success often requires specific
legislative actions or court decisions to translate multicultural aspirations into con-
crete institutionalized practices and policies. In this regard, Alexander and Smelser
(1999: 15) aptly call this “civil-society discourse”, which simultaneously advocates
on behalf of ethnic identities and solidarities while also constituting a performance
that affirms one’s identity and voice as a citizen of a democratic polity.
It is important to note that what I am calling multiculturalism refers to a
phenomenon that claims-makers may or may not have dubbed multiculturalism.
They may have called it pluralism, or simply made a case that what they were seek-
ing involved what they understood to be fair terms of integration or, more simply,
an effort to protect something of value from one’s heritage. Understood in this way,
multiculturalism is not a new phenomenon, but can be found avant la letter.
Immigrant groups are not the only claims-making ethnic groups. Indeed, indige-
nous and ethno-national groups often make more potentially far-reaching demands
than immigrants.
Defenders of diversity from Horace Kallen’s (1924) call for cultural pluralism to
contemporary exponents of multicultural theory such as Will Kymlicka (1995),
Charles Taylor (1992), and Bhikhu Parekh (2000) have been concerned first and
foremost with providing rationales for preserving difference in contemporary het-
erogeneous modern societies. And they have criticized attempts by hegemonic
groups in those societies to undermine difference by promoting agendas aimed at
insuring a form of assimilation that for newcomers involved a loss of connectedness
to their particularistic identities. What those defenders have paid insufficient atten-
tion to is the fact that many such “ethnics”, seen more clearly with each succeeding
generation, have voluntarily opted out of a thick connectedness to their ethnic past,
rather than being forced to do so (see also Chap. 4 on this point). Ethnic practices
generally persisted, though in attenuated form. Such practices were reflections of
what Herbert Gans (1979) called “symbolic ethnicity” as people exercised what
Mary Waters (1990) has called “ethnic options”.
How do we account for this steady decline of the ethnic factor, despite persistent
efforts by ethnic leaders to protect and enhance ethnic identities and allegiances
and despite greater acceptance of diversity by the mainstream society? In consider-
able part, this was due to the individualism so central to American social values, a
cultural framework that stressed resistance to obstacles to the ability to forge one’s
own sense of identity and purpose. If ethnicity limited opportunities, growing num-
bers of ethnics were prepared to either exit from ethnic involvements or minimize
26 P. Kivisto
them considerably. Thus, there was a widespread rejection of the idea that the
ethnic group constituted a boundary within which aspects of ordinary life, such as
the choice of marital partners, friends, leisure-time activities, organizational member-
ships, and so forth were to be determined. Another factor contributing to this trend
involved changes in the class structure of American society, particularly the rapid
expansion of the white collar, professional middle class. During the first half of the
past century, ethnicity and working class identities could be seen as mutually rein-
forcing, but this linkage began to give way as a consequence of generational upward
social mobility and growing affluence within the working class, particularly its
unionized sector.
As these changes transpired, people experienced their sense of self increasingly
in terms of multiple identities, which could be competing, complementary, overlap-
ping, or intersecting, and which led to a growing compartmentalization of individ-
ual identity. What this meant for ethnicity was that, far from being highly salient, it
became a less consequential element of most people’s identity kits. Such was the
case during what was dubbed an “ethnic revival” in the 1970s. While some por-
trayed this episode in terms of the reaction of working class white ethnics respond-
ing negatively to what they perceived to be the unwarranted benefits that had accrued
to black Americans as a result of the civil rights movement, others emphasized the
more symbolic nature of the revival. They described it as a “roots” revival that
endorsed a narrative of national identity emphasizing the diversity of the American
people while redefining the status of its various components. No longer were those
who could trace their ancestry to the Mayflower an elite; now whether one arrived
with the Puritans or came through Ellis Island (and, insofar as there was a height-
ened sensitivity to racial differences, Angel Island), their place in the nation was to
be valorised rather than questioned (Kaufman 2004).
This, in turn, had an impact on national identity: both about what it meant to be
an American and who was to be included in the compact. While it is not possible to
offer empirical detail here, pointing to one important transformation will have to
suffice—one that directly challenges Huntington’s belief that Protestantism alone
shapes the nation’s religious identity. After World War II, the idea percolating for
some time took root that the US was a Judeo-Christian nation, and not simply a
“Protestant empire” (Herberg 1960). To the extent that people embraced this idea,
a shift took place from an earlier period when the relationship between the Protestant
majority and Catholics and Jews, the two most consequential minority faith com-
munities, revolved around whether or not the former would exhibit tolerance from
its position of privilege or whether the three faith traditions would be seen as equally
valid expressions of religious conviction. For this to happen, two interrelated things
had to occur. First, the previously stigmatized qualities of Catholics and Jews had to
be seen in a positive light (Alexander 2006). Second, if these two traditions were to
be so embraced, it would mean that the idea of Protestantism as the one true religion
no longer held, but instead a more ecumenical sensibility was called for, one that
was prepared to accept the prospect of rethinking how people understood their own
tradition on the basis of an ongoing interreligious dialogue.
2.4 Past and Present
Stephen Warner and Rhys Williams (2011) have suggested that something similar
may be developing today, albeit in embryonic form, with efforts by Muslims and
their allies from the Judeo-Christian community suggesting a further expansion of
the circle of solidarity by depicting Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as part of a
shared Abrahamic religious tradition or as religions of the book. Needless to say, in
the “age of terror”, this development confronts serious challenges, but the earlier
enlargement of the nation’s religious identity (which, too, continues to have those
prepared to challenge its validity) in a way that relocated Catholicism and Judaism
from the periphery to the centre and in so doing changed the heretofore hegemonic
status of Protestantism, constitutes an empirically-grounded rebuttal of Huntington’s
central claim about the persistent hegemony of Anglo-Protestant culture, which, as
Richard Alba (2010: 167) observes, “obliterates the contributions of Catholics and
Jews to the mainstream cultural core”.
The post-1965 immigrants began to arrive in large numbers at precisely the time
that a new narrative of national identity took hold, which can perhaps account in
part for the fact that they entered a nation that was more sympathetic to newcomers
than was true in the past. This is not to suggest that those hostile to immigrants have
become inconsequential, for we have abundant evidence to dispute overly optimis-
tic accounts, from various efforts at the local and state levels to crack down on the
undocumented to the decade-long legislative impasse on substantive immigration
legislation reform. But, as the results of two major studies on the second-generation
have concluded, there are grounds for a more guarded optimism, seen in a variety of
indicators that suggest these children of immigrants are getting a foothold in their
homeland that may set the stage for entry into the mainstream (Portes and Rumbaut
2001; Kasinitz et al. 2008).
And, more germane to the concerns about national identity raised by Huntington,
their worldviews appear in key respects to parallel those of the native-born. To cite
but two studies that support this assessment, I point first to an explicit testing of
Huntington’s thesis by Jack Citrin and colleagues (2007), which found that Latinos
are acquiring English-language skills rather quickly, while simultaneously profi-
ciency in Spanish is declining; Hispanics and Anglos exhibit similar levels of reli-
giosity and dedication to the work ethic; and that patriotism has grown while levels
of intense commitment to ethnic identity have declined over time. These findings
are not only supported, but amplified in Deborah Schildkraut’s (2011) broader study
of Americanization, which concludes by pointing out that there is no empirical evi-
dence to support those who think that as a consequence of the pernicious impact of
multiculturalism today’s immigrants are committed to their ethnic differences at the
expense of a shared national identity.
At the same time, though the evidence is sketchier, it would appear that today’s
newcomers, like their counterparts from an earlier era, are pragmatists intent on fit-
ting in while simultaneously reshaping the national character. But what that national
identity will look like—how it will be modified by their presence—is something we
28 P. Kivisto
will only fully understand with the passage of time. In no small part, the outcome
will depend on the willingness of the members of the receiving society to forge ties
of solidarity with the dissimilar actors Young (2011) describes in making room for
the expansion of the civil sphere. This would entail valorising, rather than seeking
to overcome, ethnic diversity and making room under a nation’s sacred canopy for
heretofore marginalized religions.
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Chapter 3
Multiculturalism, Rights and Religion:
The Individual’s Human Right to Participate
and Belong
Paul Morris
Abstract The discourse of multicultural and multi-religious recognition in

contemporary societies seemingly advances in inverse proportion to oppositional
campaigns designed to limit the rights of religious and cultural minorities. In this
chapter I intend to explain this apparent paradox and suggest possible remedies for
future deliberation and discussion. The case study for this analysis will be the recent
legal, political and popular interventions over infant male, ritual circumcision that
began in Germany. I understand this case to be part of wider political and legal
debates, in Europe and beyond, over dress codes, butchering, different ritual calendars
and practices; debates that seek to define—and restrict—the acceptable levels of
religious and cultural difference in post-Christian, ostensibly secular, democracies.
Keywords Religious recognition • Cultural rights • Human rights • Multiculturalism

• Circumcision • Secularism
All contemporary nation-states are multicultural and multi-religious in having

citizens that identify with a range of cultures and religions. The very process of
modern nation-state formation entails developing institutions and policies that cre-
ate homogenous national cultures fostering a moral and values consensus (see Chap.
2), which in turn provides the foundation for cooperative, political and social life.
The inevitable tensions between the constructed, national cultural consensus and the
unprecedented diversities of contemporary multicultural realities within nation-
states has led to multicultural political and social theories, legislation and policies
that recognise cultural and religious rights, in particular those of minorities.
Will Kymlicka’s (1995) Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority
Rights offers one such influential and sophisticated response. Beginning with the
citizen, Kymlicka acknowledges that we are “cultural creatures”, formed as autonomous
P. Morris (*)
School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies, Victoria University of Wellington,
Wellington, New Zealand
e-mail: paul.morris@vuw.ac.nz

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16003-0_3
32 P. Morris
individuals—a necessity for the “good life”—within specific cultural contexts and
that these creates for us our sense of identity, of belonging to a community, and of
cogent life choices and narratives (1995: 76). Cultures are significant only in their
necessary support for the identity and community of liberal individuals in the liberal
state (1995: 76). Kymlicka subscribes to a concept of “culture” that focuses on
national and ethnic cultures, privileging the liberal forms of these, arguing that the
state should intervene to oppose illiberal cultural beliefs and practices (1995: 101)
(Chap. 4 explores this aspect of liberal multiculturalism in more depth). His novel
rationale for the state’s responsibility to rectify the “unchosen inequalities” that
arise from being part of a minority culture is that they did not elect to be part of the
nation-state in question (1995: 109). Migrants, however, are for him in a different
category and must accept the legitimacy of the “state enforcement of liberal prin-
ciples” and should assimilate to the “national culture” as part of their immigration
contract (1995: 170).
For Kymlicka, the majority religious culture simply forms part of the national
culture (“societal culture”)—an argument that is examined in Chap. 2 of this vol-
ume—and minority religions are aspects of their respective ethnic cultures and he
has little to say specifically about religious diversity or religions. Religious affilia-
tions and identifications are often more deeply foundational than Kymlicka’s notion
of culture and are understood in terms of sacred legacy or inheritance, and of a
loyalty that is equally significant to an individual as their autonomy. This privileg-
ing of culture over religion requires further consideration and many scholars claim
for religion the same functional and conceptual space as Kymlicka’s notion of cul-
ture: identity, community; life purpose and existential meaning.
Multiculturalism as a pluralistic political theory is developed by Bhikhu Parekh
in his Rethinking Multiculturalism (2000, see also 1997). He seeks to acknowledge
the contributions of theorists such as Kymlicka (1995) and Raz (1998) but argues
that they too easily dismiss cultural diversity in favour of their “absolutised” liberal
viewpoint. Parekh, also a liberal, recognises that there really are differences between
cultures with different values, moralities, meanings and visions of the good life.
While he understands each culture as specific he considers cultures to be both
dynamic and to reflect human universals. Every culture thus reflects a dialectic
between universal humanness and very particular historical experiences. Although
he still subsumes religion in culture, his concept of culture is broader than most
liberal theorists and acknowledges a profound embeddedness (Parekh 2000: 275–
89, 295–335). Further, he sees every culture as characterised by “internal plurality”;
and contends that interactions between cultures are opportunities for a new open-
ness to diverse cultural discourses in the public realm. Parekh (2000) writes that
“since multicultural societies represent an interplay of different cultures, they can-
not be theorised or managed from within any one of them”. Committed to both
liberalism and multiculturalism and understanding them to be “moderated” by “the
logic of one by the other”, he moves beyond liberalism to the multicultural
“community of citizens” that is simultaneously a “community of communities”
(Parekh 2000: 275–89, 295–335).
3 Multiculturalism, Rights and Religion: The Individual’s Human Right… 33
It is interesting that many of the illustrations selected for analysis in Parekh’s

study are religious concerns, including free speech and religious defamation; the
role of religion in public life; and an extended discussion of female circumcision.
His multicultural analysis draws on historical, textual and religious contexts to
clearly set up the need to balance citizenship with cultural/religious rights. Tensions
between these two cannot be settled by the imposition of any single logic, he insists,
but can be addressed pragmatically by discussion, negotiation and agreement and he
considers that the very discussion itself will broaden, “moderate” and ultimately
transform and extend public discourse (Parekh 2000: 340–44).
Charles Taylor has directly addressed religion and multiculturalism in his writ-
ing on the nature of the secular and acknowledges that migration necessitates a re-
examination of the range of “spiritual families” that must be heard. He envisages
that by becoming seen as legitimate “interlocutors” in public debates about “the
exact regime of rights and privileges”, these communities will be changed and
deepen their political participation in democracies. That this will entail conflicts
between competing goods or goals that will have to be balanced, he acknowledges,
but he considers that we “we have the wrong model” of secularism, in that, “we
think that secularism (or laïcité) has to do with the relation of the state and religion,
whereas in fact it has to do with the (correct) response of the democratic state to
diversity” (Taylor 2010).
Multicultural theory has indeed generated a more inclusive and enhanced level of
public discourse that is less “overwhelmingly monological” and that acknowledges
the need to balance individual democratic rights with religious and cultural rights.
Yet whether the public sphere has been permanently broadened or is more hospita-
ble to religious claims is debateable (Taylor 1994: 32).
The discourse of multicultural and multi-religious recognition in contemporary
societies seemingly advances in inverse proportion to oppositional campaigns
designed to limit the rights of religious and cultural minorities. In this chapter I
intend to explain this apparent paradox and suggest possible remedies for future
deliberation and discussion. The case study for this analysis will be the recent legal,
political and popular interventions over infant male, ritual circumcision that began
in Germany. As will become clear I understand this case to be part of wider political
and legal debates, in Europe and beyond, over dress codes, butchering, different
ritual calendars and practices; debates that seek to define—and restrict—the accept-
able levels of religious and cultural difference in post-Christian, ostensibly secular,
democracies.
These discussions of religious difference usually commence with legislative or
policy changes, or court cases, and via populist media reporting inform public dis-
course on multiculturalism and religion (for examples, see Chaps. 6 and 9). For
instance, recently, Mr Justice Baker, tacitly acknowledged a rabbinic court (Beth
Din) by incorporating the religious court’s ongoing involvement in a divorce settle-
ment into his High Court judgement. This perfectly sensible and relatively minor
issue was reported in The Times (1 Feb 2013) as a “landmark decision” under the
front page banner headline, “High Court opens way to Sharia divorces”, although
the case did not deal with Islam or Muslims. Or, the recent report in a Dutch
34 P. Morris
newspaper that Geert Wilders, leader of the 15 seat Dutch Freedom Party (PVV),
has revived his campaign for a total ban in Holland on Jewish and Muslim butchery
as part of the electoral promotion of the party. In my own country, New Zealand,
there was an attempt to remove the “ministerial exemption” that allowed Jews to
follow religious directives on animal slaughter in 2010. Religious rights, framed
within the discourse of a benign and enlightened multiculturalism and on the sur-
face protected under existing human rights legislation—both in terms of the
acknowledgment of religious rights and the prohibition of discrimination on reli-
gious grounds—turn out to be extremely vulnerable whenever concerns do arise;
under the weight of widespread public opposition and calls to greatly restrict reli-
gions from legal and other so-called experts. Human rights law generally proceeds
from universal rights, making subsequent exemptions for particular designated
groups. This, like the ministerial exemption to pre-slaughter stunning in New
Zealand for Jews, all too often proves to be fragile. And like all exemptions, this can
be vulnerable to the pressure for universal policy applications, political change, and
conformist populism.
3.1 The Cologne Decision and Its Aftermath
Recent tensions over ritual male circumcision that began in Germany with a court
decision in May 2012 have led to, and fed into, debates across the globe about this
particular practice and the human rights of the children and families involved. In our
globalised juridical world the impact of this comparatively minor court decision
reverberated around Europe and beyond, raising concerns about how deeply embed-
ded multicultural protections of religious and cultural rights really are and what
level of assimilation is currently being proposed for minorities in order to ensure
recognition, emancipation and equality.
In November 2010 a Muslim surgeon, Dr Omar Kezze, performed a ritual cir-
cumcision on a 4-year-old boy, Ali al-Akbar, at the request of his parents. This was
performed using a local anaesthetic in a Cologne hospital. Two days afterwards the
boy was taken to the University hospital as the wound was bleeding. Staff informed
police who reported the incident to the local prosecutor’s office. Press reports indi-
cated that the mother had complications with her residency papers and was hospi-
talised in a psychiatric unit after jumping from a third floor window. The prosecution
service charged Dr Kezze with a breach of the criminal law, namely, of causing
assault and bodily harm (German Criminal Code 2013: §223.1, §224.1). The
Cologne District Court1 refused the case2 and acquitted Kezze on the grounds that
1
Amtsgericht, or trial court.
2
Docket no. 528 Ds 30/11.
there had been no medical error and there was uncertainty at the time over the
legality of circumcision.3
That would have been the end to it except the public prosecutor appealed and the
case was referred to the Cologne Regional Court.4 The higher court unequivocally
acquitted Kezze: noting that a physician using a scalpel in a hospital did not consti-
tute the use of a dangerous weapon nor was there any wilful wrongdoing. The
Regional Court, however, went on to consider the necessity to balance what it
viewed as competing human rights; namely, the fundamental rights of the parents of
freedom of faith and conscience (Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany
2012: Art 4.1) and the natural right and duty of parents to bring up their child
(Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany 2012: Art 6.2) versus the rights of
the child (Günzel 2013) to “physical integrity” (Basic Law for the Federal Republic
of Germany 2012: Art 2.1, Art 2.2). The court concluded that in this case the latter
outweighed the former; “circumcision for the purpose of religious upbringing con-
stitutes a violation of physical integrity and self-determination” (Landerricht
Judgement 2012). The judgement further decided that a “child’s body is perma-
nently and irreparably changed by the circumcision” and that there was an absence
of consent, as he did not have the “intellectual maturity to give it” (German Criminal
Code 2013: §288). The child therefore could not decide his religious affiliation at a
later date, as a non-circumcised person, and that his parents’ right of education had
not been “unacceptably diminished by requiring them to wait until their son is able
to make the decision himself whether to have a circumcision as a visible sign of his
affiliation to Islam” (Landerricht Judgement 2012).
This decision removed the earlier uncertainty about circumcision, effectively
criminalising it on males under the age of consent—currently 18—for religious
reasons, and as inconsistent with the “best interests of the child” (German Civil
Code BGB 2014: §1627). The judges contended that restricting male circumcision
to informed adolescents was not a restriction of their freedom of religion, but rather
the upholding of the child’s right to this very freedom. It is this last point that I will
return to and challenge below. The decision, even if not technically a legal prece-
dent, had huge implications for Germany’s more than 4 million Muslims and more
than 100,000 Jews (Fateh-Moghadam 2012).
The fallout has been extensive and global. The Knesset Diaspora affairs commit-
tee had an emergency session in Jerusalem. There were press statements from
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her ministers and protests from Jewish and
Muslim representative organisations in Germany, Europe and beyond. The Central
Council of Muslims in Germany described the decision as “blatant and inadmissible
interference” in the rights of parents, while the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland
called the decision, “a dramatic and unprecedented intervention in the right of reli-
gious communities to self-determination”. The issue was raised at the European
Parliament in Brussels where Muslim and Jewish leaders lodged an official com-
plaint in terms of the “affront to their basic religious and human rights”. The Secular
3
Specifically, under Section 17, Mistake of Law, akin in English law, to there being no mens rea.
4
Landgericht, a higher court, with a professional judge and two lay judges.
36 P. Morris
Medical Forum, an atheist lobby group responded by advocating a universal ban on

“non-consensual circumcision”, endorsed by celebrity atheist, Richard Dawkins.
Twenty members of the US Congress wrote an outraged public letter to the German
ambassador in Washington and there were editorials and commentary in leading
media outlets worldwide. Two Swiss hospitals suspended all circumcisions, the
governor of Austria’s Vorarlberg province advised the same, and Norway’s
Ombudsman for Children’s Rights proposed that Jews and Muslims replace circum-
cision with a symbolic non-surgical ritual. The German court decision was linked to
the proposed ballot referendum to ban circumcisions in San Francisco5 and Russell
Crowe, the New Zealand Oscar winning actor, is reported to have tweeted film-
maker Eli Roth, “I love my Jewish friends, I love the apples and the honey and the
funny little hats but stop cutting your babies”. An article in The Guardian asking
whether it was time to ban circumcision prompted hundreds of responses, and on 20
August 2012 criminal charges of committing bodily harm were filed against Rabbi
David Goldberg in Northern Bavaria for performing a circumcision.
The debate filled the blogosphere, legal and other columnists and commentators
brought to the fore obscure legal scholarship and the very worst of anti-Semitism,
Islamophobia and racist prejudices. A poll showed 60 % of Germans equated cir-
cumcision with genital mutilation, a comparison, however, that the Cologne court
refused to draw. By a 56–35 margin, Germans told the Focus magazine poll that
they supported a ban on circumcision. The country’s Child Protection Agency
hailed the decision as a landmark for children’s rights. Media commentary in
Germany and elsewhere in Europe for the most part supported the decision of the
Cologne court. The online claims that the practices are barbaric and non-European
and that “foreigners” must give them up if they want to be accepted by their co-
citizens were rampant and make for sobering reading and viewing.
3.2 Religion and Consenting Adults
In this second section I return to, and focus on the issue of consent. The Cologne
judges insisted that for circumcision to be lawful it must be the personal choice of a
male over the age of 18 and, even if this is extended with a version of the Gillick
competency test to include younger aware teenagers—this requirement for consent
was pivotal to the judgement. The Court insisted that “the religious freedom of the
parents and their right to educate their child would not be unacceptably compro-
mised if they were obliged to wait until the child could himself [sic] decide to be
circumcised”. This is also reflected in the recommendations of the Royal Dutch
Medical Association and advocates of law change in Scandinavia and elsewhere.
While there is clearly an inconsistency in that both the Lutheran and Catholic
churches in Germany offer public religious rituals that include children long before
they are of age to make binding legal commitments under German law, the law’s
5
28 July 2011, Superior Court Judge Loretta Giorgi ruled that the proposed ban (November 2012
California ballot) violated the US constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom.
inconsistent application is beyond the scope of this chapter. My contention is that

this view—that religion can be taken up as an adult by free choice and that this is
the ideal of religious identification and commitment—betrays a lack of understanding
of the actual nature of religion and the ways in which it functions.
Religious formation, to use the more technical and useful term, within a given
community, is not something held off until the age of majority—religion does not
function like that. Part of the difficulty in grasping this is simply the levels of
secularisation, in the sense of the lessening of the public knowledge and influ-
ence of religious institutions, reflected in legislation and public discourse. We can
have some idea of this by looking at the English, or New Zealand, courts, where
increasingly there is a general recognition that religion is a migrant, marginal or
minority concern that deviates from secular norms; and that on balance with
other rights, particularly those of the child or minor, religious rights come off as
secondary and deemed less significant than ‘real’ rights—such as the sacrality of
all choices except religious ones and that of the sovereign, secular, self-determin-
ing individual.
An idea of how far we have travelled can be seen from the judgment of Justice
Farwell at the Chancery Division in London in 1902, “one of the first and most
sacred duties of parents is to imbue the mind of children with some religious belief,
and this is done not merely by precept and instruction but by unconscious influence
of everyday life and conduct” (Hall 1966: 290). This contrasts dramatically with
recent debates about the traumatic effects of coerced infant baptism (Deseret News
1996; Daily Mail Reporter 2010; Satterfield 2012). These are not new issues and
resonate with the sixteenth century debates about adult baptism and consent.
Christian parents believe that baptism removes the stain of original sin but it is
equally the marking of the entry into a community undertaken in the parents’ view
in the very best interests of the child. It allows the child to participate and belong to
their community. The meaning of the ritual is as much religious/theological as it is
sociological. It is an ongoing marker of community. Recently at the christening of a
friend’s child, the Greek Patriarch began, “let all those who are not baptised leave”.
The very boundaries of religious community (ecclesia) that the infant was to join
were publicly articulated—should I stay or should I go? It might also be debated
whether baptism is more or less traumatic than circumcision carried out with an
anaesthetic.
The evidence on religious formation is very clear and it is an issue well under-
stood by scholars of religious studies. Children brought up outside of religious com-
munities do not, and cannot, as their liberal parents so often insist, make free
religious choices as adults. Brought up without religion and community the chances
of taking up religion are very significantly reduced. There is a tiny minority of adults
who do take up religion as a result of their own choice but they are a very small in
number and an exception. To deprive a child of being part of a religious community
is most likely to deprive that person of that religion, and an increased likelihood all
religion, for life: since religion is about formation within a community. The fact that
this is so can be seen as a very good thing, as did the late Christopher Hitchens, or it
can be seen as a tragedy, depending on your perspective. I refer to this phenomenon
38 P. Morris
as the “half-life of religion”. Each generation of non-practice and affiliation allows

a fading glow that while it persists does so ever more dimly.
My research in New Zealand on this is subject is revealing.6 Among students
who received no religious background—defined as no instruction, observance, or
membership—more than four out of five of them currently have “no religion” and
do not consider themselves as part of any religious community. There is a statisti-
cally small minority of those who did not have a religious formation of any dis-
cernible kind who do find their way to religious communities via potential or
actual friends, lovers or idealism or naivety, but they are statistically small. Of
those who did grow up within a religious community more than half continue at
the same perceived and reported levels of religiosity as their parents, with another
20 % declaring themselves as open to religion but not actively involved—believers
without belonging—that is, religiously deinstitutionalised. For some this includes
religious cultural and ethno-religious identities and solidarities. Just over 18 % of
those who did have religious formations become “more religious than their par-
ents” and these in our study included Christians, Muslims and Jews. It is interest-
ing to note that many of these described their parents as “nominally religious”, or
their families as “Christian in name”, or as not very religious Muslims, or “watery
Anglicans”, or Jewish but not really observant, or as not active in the community.
But what is significant is that these backgrounds, albeit later appreciated to be
insufficient or inadequate, point to providing the necessary foundation for
increased religious identification and practice. The scholarly literature on conver-
sion bears this out. The growth by conversion of the newer Evangelical and
Pentecostal Protestant churches in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and
the Pacific islands is from other denominations rather than the non-affiliated and
the figures for “no religion” in Europe and North America show explicit genera-
tional decline.
And, of course, religion is not the only irreversible choice that parents make:
educational, locality, religious, social and recreational activities and so on. It might
well be considered that to be part of a community, to have a religious identity, is in
the best interests of the child—in terms of the welfare principle—and that this
should only be thwarted by the state if the child’s health or safety is threatened seri-
ously and there is a risk of suffering if they don’t intervene.
Religious formation in this sense is akin to a language, and not being part of a
community is like not having a mother tongue and just as you can indeed learn a
language as an adult and even learn it well it cannot be a mother tongue but only
ever a second language. This issue is also reflected in debates amongst indigenous
communities where not having the right to live and grow as part of a community,
learning language, customary practices and spiritual traditions is a denial of identity
and community. In summary, liberalism in the sense interpreted by the Cologne
judges is corrosive of religion and a choice for later turns out to be no choice at all.
6
A study of 100 level religious studies students, conducted each year since 2000.
To give the judges and the majority in agreement with them the benefit of the doubt,
understanding them to be well-meaning and benign, it is still the case that they mis-
understand religion and evidence an advanced secularity that blinds them to the
nature of faith and formation within a religious community. It is hard not to see
this gap having further consequences in Europe and beyond (see, Pollack et al.
2012; Niemelä 2006; Davie 1994, 2000; Pickel and Müller 2009; Fuller 2002;
Hervieu-Léger 2000; Voas and Crockett 2005).
3.3 Human Rights
Let us briefly examine the human rights issues, including the limits and extent of
parental consent regarding children, the power of the state to intervene in parental
decision-making in the treatment of minors, bodily integrity, and what might actu-
ally be in the best interests of the child. For example, the UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child (UNCROC), 1989, Article 19, states that parties are to take “all
appropriate legislative, administrative, social, and educational measures to protect
the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or
negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse” (OHCHR
1989). I do not consider ritual male circumcision to be an act of violence, nor to
cause injury, it is not abuse, and certainly not sexual abuse as usually understood in
the Convention. There are those that do not agree and consider male, infant, ritual
circumcision as all of these and more (Benatar and Benatar 2003). For example,
Professor Neville Turner from Monash University, in an article, “Circumcised boys
can sue” (Turner 1996) likens male circumcision to gender reassignment in terms of
being “major, severe and irreversible”; this is rhetorically and polemically incendi-
ary, male circumcision is actually routine and not major, takes only a few minutes,
causes discomfort and clearly some pain, although anaesthetics are often utilised,
and there is, of course, a growing business in reversal of the loss of part of the fore-
skin. I neither consider infant ritual male circumcision to be the criminal mutilation
of a minor, nor do I consider this even to be the issue at all. It is also important to
clearly distinguish between female genital mutilation and infant male ritual circum-
cision as these are increasingly conflated in the legal and advocacy literature.7 Even
the Cologne judges referred to the effects on Ali as “minor” bodily harm.
This is a legally complex issue with parallels to infant piercings, prophylactic
tonsillectomies, cosmetic orthodontics, even vaccinations. I had 4 perfectly healthy
wisdom teeth removed at 13 so I would not have protruding front teeth like most of
7
Although many commentators conflate female and infant male circumcision (for example,
MacDonald 2004) there are significant differences including purpose and medical implications.
See, Webber and Schonfeld (2003) who argue that female circumcision is undertaken for quite
different reasons and that it is vital that these form part of the discussion.
40 P. Morris
my father’s family. All the above are routinely undertaken in the judged best inter-
ests of the child.
UNCROC 1989 is understood to mark a turning point in children’s rights. Article
24, Section 3 states “[…] parties shall take all effective and appropriate measures
with a view to abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children”
(OHCHR 1989). This was directly formulated to combat female genital mutilation
but has been utilized in relation to traditional tattoos and piercings and there is a
growing tide of opinion and advocacy that seeks to formally include male ritual
circumcision under this article (Langlaude 2007). Two immediate questions arise
from Article 24. Is circumcision traditional? And, is it prejudicial?
It is certainly traditional, found in Genesis 17:9–11and Leviticus 12:3 for Jews.8
It is deemed unnecessary for “Christians” in Galatians 5:3–49 and the Roman
Catholic Church declared circumcision a mortal sin in the fifteenth century, a deci-
sion later overturned. It became a fashion for Protestants in Victorian Britain and the
US under the new hygiene regimes as a cure for just about anything and everything.
There is an extensive Jewish and Muslim legal literature on circumcision and the
rationale for particular laws and commandments but these too are not the central
issue here although they make for fascinating reading, particularly in relation to the
understood benefits of male ritual circumcision. Whatever reasons Jews adduce for
the practice, it is important to note that circumcision has been for Jews a marker of
the boundary lines of the community, a marker of identity in relation to St Paul and
his new community; a sign of the covenant; and still a custom near universally prac-
ticed among both religious and secular Jews (Thiessen 2011). It is a link of continu-
ity through countless generations of Jews; an official entry into a religious and
cultural community. For Muslims too, the practice is near universal and marks
membership of a community as mandated by the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad:
“law for men and a preservation of honour for women” and has purity associations
(Sahih Muslim n.d.; Kueny 2004; Alahmad and Dekkers 2012; Barkat 2009).
Circumcision for Muslims and Jews is a sign of belonging, traced back to the patri-
arch Abraham/Ibrahim. As with all rituals there are a wide variety of practices
across Muslim communities. The Jewish and Islamic traditions both see circumci-
sion as a communal boundary marker and in the Bible the 43 references in 39 verses
to the uncircumcised are mostly negative. Circumcision is a marker of a child’s
membership of a community and of a child’s participation in a community. It
became a significant element in the identity debate for the early churches (see Acts
15) in a Hellenistic world most unsympathetic to it. Some Jews even went to lengths
8
“And God said unto Abraham: And as for you, you shall keep My covenant, you, and your seed
after you throughout their generations. This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me
and you and your seed after you: every male among you shall be circumcised. And you shall be
circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a sign of a covenant between Me and you”
(Genesis 17:9–11); “And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised” (Leviticus
12:3).
9
“For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ
is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; you are fallen from
grace” (Galatians 5:3–4).
to disguise it.10 The Talmud records that the consul Titus Flavius Clemens was con-
demned to death by the Roman Senate in 95 CE for circumcising himself and con-
verting to Judaism, and the emperor Hadrian (117–138) forbade circumcision (see
Hoffman 1996; Silverman 2006; Cohen 2005). Since 1843 there has been a debate
within Judaism about it (Judd 2007).
Covenantal for Jews (see Deutsch 2012, especially Chap. 3), significant for
Muslims, circumcision is also found among other communities, mostly desert com-
munities, for example, indigenous Australians. There are anthropological explana-
tions (Weiss 1966; Paige 1978), evolutionary accounts and psychological
explications like Freud’s (Remondino [1891] 2003).
Is circumcision prejudicial? Some boys die as with all medical procedures per-
formed on infants, maximal care must be taken to minimise risks. So, arguably tra-
ditional but not prejudicial, but I want to further argue that it can be highly prejudicial
to deny a child this traditional practice. These rights are acute in relation to children
or minors. Children’s rights are usually discussed in terms of the ‘3 Ps’: provision
(health, education, sustenance and shelter); protection (from abuse, neglect, bully-
ing, discrimination, safety within a justice system) and participation (freedom of
expression, to take part in public life). It is this last P, participation, which I want to
extend to include the right to participate in communal life as a full member. So
often, the contrast is between the child’s best interest and the parental right to the
free expression of religion but here I want to emphasise that the right to be part of a
religious or cultural group might well be in a child’s interests, perhaps best interest.
UNICEF does emphasise a child’s right to participation in terms of evolving capac-
ity, adoption, separation, name changes, health and education, but has nothing to
say about cultural or religious participation (Denniston et al. 2001).
3.4 A New Individual Human Right: The Right to Belong to,

and Participate in, a Religious or Cultural Community
In this third section I suggest an individual human rights way of looking at cultural
and religious rights. In a landmark 1994 article, Avishai Margalit and Moshe
Halbertal argue for a liberal “right to culture” understood as an “individual’s right”
not to culture per se but to “their own” culture (1994). They note that “protecting
cultures out of the human right to culture may take the form of an obligation to sup-
port cultures that flout the rights of the individual in a liberal society” and that this
can entail the recognition of a “group right” to maintain a culture, that is presup-
posed by the individual’s right to their culture (Margalit and Halbertal 1994:
10
“They built a Gentile-style gymnasium in Jerusalem. They also pulled forward their prepuces,
thereby repudiating the holy covenant” (1 Maccabees 1:15).
42 P. Morris
491–95). They understand this to be limited only by the “harm principle”.11 This is
a suggestive way to explore individual and group religious rights.
Cultural rights as group rights historically have been exceptions to universal
codes in relation to specific communities, that is, they were tolerated as deviations
from universal human rights norms; special arrangements to accommodate minor-
ities. These exceptions have proven and are proving to be extremely fragile. Like
kosher butchering in Scandinavia and more recently in New Zealand exceptions
can be ended, not renewed, or simply cancelled. The current situation in Europe
where kosher butchering has been outlawed in Switzerland, Sweden, Norway and
Iceland; religious calendar exemptions for public examinations have ended
recently in France along with the possible ending of elective funding for religious
communities and their religious education; the banning of minarets in Switzerland;
and of course, the burqa and other religious restrictions in France; the global
backlash against multiculturalism is ever more evident. We are entering a new era
of forced assimilation and the rejections and de-legitimization of religious and
cultural differences. Also evident is our post Protestant bias, reflecting philosophi-
cal dualism, of according less constitutional protection to religious practices
rather than beliefs.
The principle of democracy is the right to participate in the political process
however attenuated that might be. I am suggesting an extension of this basic right
for all to participate in their cultural or religious communities. This right would
include the individual right of every child to be part of a community and be formed
by belonging to that community. This would be the child’s right rather than simply
a parental one. This has a particular resonance in the discussions and debates over
indigenous communities, indigenous languages and customs, and a right to be part
of a community. Two asides follow: a brief discussion on the medical literature; and
a comparison between the European and American contexts concerning circumci-
sion; followed by concluding comments.
It is important to note that the medical evidence, much of it technical, uses stan-
dard medical frameworks to evaluate what is essentially a religious practice rather
than as a medical procedure or intervention. Without religious and cultural refer-
ence these evaluations greatly distort matters, and, of course, circumcision fares
poorly from a purely medical point of view. While circumcision was near universal
in the US (Glick 2005) and UK (see, Darby 2005) numbers have dropped dramati-
cally over the last two decades and continue to do so.12 This departure from the
recent past has been accompanied by steady decline in medical support for universal
infant male circumcision. The long awaited report of the American Academy of
11
The test case for the limits of parental choice is that of Jehovah’s Witness parents who refuse “a
necessary for life” blood transfusion for their child. Here there is no ambiguity regarding harm to
the child, if they do not receive the blood transfusion they will die. This is the justification for
intervention. It is important to note that for some Jehovah’s Witnesses the harm as a result of the
blood transfusion (denied eternal life) not because of death.
12
In the US down from 80 % two decades ago to approximately 25 %, in UK 8 or 9 %; 10–20 %
for NZ and Australia; 90 % in Nigeria and Philippines, 60 % in Korea, 100 % in Saudi, Jordan,
Afghanistan and Israel and Palestine, and 30 % globally (WHO and UNAIDS 2007).
Paediatrics, Circumcision Taskforce (2012), argued that while there should be

parental choice for cultural or religious reasons, circumcision should not be univer-
sally recommended (American Academy of Pediatrics 2012). It also reported that
there were some “minimal medical benefits in terms of infections and cancer rates”.
They concluded that the health benefits outweighed the risks although they did
recommend the use of anaesthesia.13 The Australian College of Physicians’ report
(2010) is more negative: it too withholds support for universal circumcision but,
further, fails to identify any real health benefits to the practice, although it leaves
open the possibility of parental choice on religious grounds. This report has gener-
ated a series of direct and indirect responses, such as Sydney University’s Brian
Morris in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings who along with his co-authors argues that
the life-long protection from infection and disease afforded by infant circumcision
justifies what they describe as an “equivalent to childhood vaccination” that should
be a “routine procedure” for all boys (Morris et al. 2014). Recently, circumcision
has been taken up by the World Health Organisation as central to its HIV-Aids cam-
paign in sub-Saharan Africa (See Tobian and Gray 2011).14 At least ten Zimbabwean
MPs have been circumcised as part of a campaign to reduce HIV and Aids cases. In
summary, the current debates within the mainstream US, UK, Australia and UN
expert medical opinion acknowledges the potential medical benefits of circumcision
for the control of the spread of HIV-AIDS, particularly in Africa, and tends towards
parental choice for religious minorities. On the other hand European medics and
jurists are often vehemently opposed to all forms of circumcision, including infant
male ritual circumcision, and view it as a gross violation of the rights of children
who society should protect from bodily harm and unnecessary torture.
The differences in European and American responses to the issue of circumci-
sion from the courts, officials, commentators, and public opinion, requires an expla-
nation. It is clear that while Western Europeans generally understand governments
to be benign and supportive of citizens in the pursuit of the lives, Americans have a
stronger sense of keeping government out of personal, community and family lives.
Reading the literature on the debates about circumcision, the European medics,
academics and professional medical associations are nearly universally opposed to
the practice, a view supported by public opinion. In sharp contrast there is public
13
“Systematic evaluation of English-language peer-reviewed literature from 1995 through 2010
indicates that preventive health benefits of elective circumcision of male newborns outweigh the
risks of the procedure. Benefits include significant reductions in the risk of urinary tract infection
in the first year of life and, subsequently, in the risk of heterosexual acquisition of HIV and the
transmission of other sexually transmitted infections” (American Academy of Pediatrics 2012).
14
This is the largest meta-study to date: “adult male circumcision decreases human immunodefi-
ciency virus (HIV) acquisition in men by 51–60 %, and the long-term follow-up of these study
participants has shown that the protective efficacy of male circumcision increases with time from
surgery. These findings are consistent with a large number of observational studies in Africa and in
the United States that found male circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection in men. There
appears to be substantial evidence that removal of the foreskin reduces the risk of male hetero-
sexual HIV acquisition”. They also report that there is “no significant differences in male sexual
satisfaction or dysfunction” among those circumcised.
44 P. Morris
and professional support in the US for the practice being a legitimate issue of paren-
tal choice. The dominant American view seems to be that it really is none of the
government’s business—consistent with the view that state and religion should be
separate and that the state should be neutral concerning religion. José Casanova
(2009) adds to this the considerably lower socioeconomic demographic of Muslim
immigrants to Europe compared to the better situation of Muslim migrants to the
US and their position as migrants in a nation of migrants. Further, he argues that
there are marked differences between American and European understandings of
“the role of religion and religious group identities in public life and in the organisa-
tion of civil society” and that “Western European societies are deeply secular,
shaped by the hegemonic knowledge regime of secularism” (2009). Casanova con-
trasts “Christian/secular Europe” with “Judeo-Christian/secular America” contend-
ing that migrants, particularly Muslims, are more alien and less able to readily
integrate in the European context than in the more religious American context
(Casanova 2009).
There is a very different situation in the State of Israel (Medinat Yisrael). In
1998 Ben Shalem, an Israeli NGO, “opposed to the cutting of infant genitals”, peti-
tioned the Israeli Supreme Court to issue conditional orders against several minis-
tries with broadly similar argumentation to that of the court in Cologne. The appeal
was first answered in 1998 by the Israeli Attorney’s Office. Based on this answer,
the Israeli Supreme Court delivered its two-sentence rejection of issuing condi-
tional orders on May 30, 1999. The Attorney’s Office reply begins by placing sig-
nificant emphasis on the importance of circumcision as a religious tradition. It goes
on to explain that according to Jewish sources,15 the circumcised penis symbolizes
the brit (bond or covenant) between God and Abraham’s descendants. It explains
furthermore that circumcising 8-day-old boys is a religious commandment (mitz-
vah) that is “higher in importance than the entire commandments of the Torah put
together and that the act itself represents the completion of the human body by
human deeds”.16 Their main contention is that circumcision cannot be considered
in terms of medical malpractice because it is not a medical procedure at all,17 this
they understood “reflects the common understanding of the brit in Israeli society”,
and of course circumcision is carried out by a mohel (a specially trained circum-
ciser) rather than a physician.
I consider that every child has the right to participate in a religious or cultural
community and that the state should only intervene when there is serious risk of
15
In the Bible and beyond, “uncircumcised” (arelim) has been a derogatory euphemism for gentiles
(See, for examples, Joshua 5:9, I Samuel 14:6 and 31:4, and Isaiah 52:1). Pirkei Avot 3:15, “One
who breaks the Covenant of Abraham, even if he has Torah and good deeds, has no portion in the
World To Come”. In Kabbalistic traditions, it is regarded as essential to opening the body and soul
to the Divine.
16
Here the Attorney’s Office quotes Rabbi Aaron Levi from his Sefer ha-Chinuch (Book on
Education), “the completion is handmade and is not complete in birth. The hint being, that physical
and spiritual completion follows only by human actions”.
17
According to the laws regulating a medical procedure defined in Article 1 of Israel’s Medical
Directives (1976, cited in Paz 2012).
injury or harm. This is a universal, individual human right—the right of a child to

be part of a community, and not just any community but the specific community in
which they live. This right is the context for the debates about circumcision.
3.5 Conclusions
The secular context of modern states is most significant for our explications of mul-
ticulturalism. The secularity of public institutions, increasingly including those that
are formally Faith-Based Organisations or have religious origins, leads to the
incomprehension of religious claims or sensibilities, particularly as they relate to
the religiously inscribed body or physical rituals. This incomprehension leads mul-
ticultural policy in the wrong directions and consistently makes false conclusions
about the religious life of citizens and residents: religion is something that you will
overcome en route to becoming a fully rational, mature, secular citizen who can
make archetypal Protestant moves to spiritualise and symbolically reduce ritual and
physical custom to poiesis and the metaphorical.
Of course, as with other human rights, the right to belong and participate will
sometimes need to be balanced against other rights but a full recognition of this
human right and a more accurate and sophisticated and less banal view of religion
would generate a more balanced contest.
At the time of the controversy, Chancellor Angela Merkel, a renowned opponent
and very public critic of multiculturalism insisted that circumcisions could continue
in Germany, and in December 2012 the Bundestag adopted a law, an amendment to
the Civil Code that explicitly permits non-therapeutic circumcision to be performed
under certain conditions,18 by a vote of 434–100, with 46 abstentions. Her reason
was that “Germany was not to be a laughing stock” (Jones 2012). Here the Nazi past
ran up against contemporary events and not to be a “laughing stock” is not a particu-
larly good reason to allow such practices (see Judd 2007).19 This was reported as an
unpopular decision according to polls conducted at that time indicating that the
majority of Germans oppose circumcision (TNS-Emnid, Focus magazine, 56 %),
and that levels of anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish feeling were at around 20 % and
increasing.20
18
The new law, which introduces restrictions on the practice for the first time, requires that the
procedure be carried out by a medically trained and certified practitioner such as a mohel, or ritual
circumciser, or by a medical professional, and that anaesthetic be used if needed. For a child over
6 months old, the procedure must be done in a hospital.
19
The Nazis claimed that “circumcision had a metamorphosing effect. Supposedly the removal of
the foreskin transformed the individual, a claim they emphasized in their use of the terms deform
or disfigure when describing the rite”. It is interesting and important to note that the Nazis never
sought to ban circumcision. The Catholic Church in the 1930s could not accept that the Son of
God, a circumcised Jew, was “deformed” or “degraded”.
20
For example, the “expert” opinion included: Germany’s Child Protection Society (Kinderhilfe)
denounced the ritual as “a blank check for religiously motivated child abuse”; Wolfram Hartmann,
46 P. Morris
What is evidenced by the circumcision case is the continuing fragility of cultural

rights, the levels of hostility and the bending of expert legal and medical advice to
oppress minority religious communities. This is exacerbated by the failure on the
part of secular authorities to grasp religion or religious formation at all. The value
in considering a universal right to belong and participate in a particular community
on parallel with language, culture and family would also seem to be worthy of fur-
ther discussion. The ever more secular religious half-life of Europeans is increas-
ingly mutating into a specific form of intolerance, and the professional, legal and
scientific endorsement of prejudice.
There is both a considerable reduction in religious affiliation across the West and
increasing numbers of “nones” that parallels the equally dramatic decline in circum-
cisions together with the rise of organised opposition to both religion and circumci-
sion. The pressures generated by our current financial crisis and the attendant
austerity measures increase racist, anti-multicultural sentiments. We are at a critical
point where there is growing incomprehension at religion and religious rituals and
increasing secularisation necessitating the rethinking of religious rights lest they be
lost.
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Chapter 4
Multiple Multiculturalisms: Resentment,
Religion and Liberalism
Patrick Imbert
Where multiculturalism has not yet become a poisoned term—

as I think is still true in my own country of Canada—I would
argue that the fight for diversity can and should be still fought
in the name of multiculturalism.
(Kymlicka 2012: 214)
Abstract This chapter discusses multiculturalism as an ideology and social

policy aimed at supporting migrant integration and cultural adaptation within
émigré societies. It anchors this discussion largely in Tariq Modood’s
(Multiculturalism. Polity Press, Cambridge, 2007) book Multiculturalism, which
studies the complexities of multiculturalism and its relation to religion, mainly
Islam in the UK. Modood believes “multiculturalism (to be) the political accom-
modation of minorities formed by immigration to Western countries from outside
the prosperous West”. With this definition, evoking Europe’s position toward
Islam, he rejects Kymlicka’s arguments that are mainly based on a secular per-
spective, and argues that Kymlicka’s ideas are not suitable for a European con-
text. For Modood, resentment is an important component of encountering the
other. So resentment along with displacement and the possibility to change (and
to belong or differentiate), is an important and often unseen dimension of multi-
culturalism. Consequently, Modood’s Multiculturlaism reveals the need for theo-
reticians of multiculturalism to better account for the nexus between religion,
culture and economic development and wellbeing.
Keywords Multiculturalism • Liberalism • Religion • Resentment • Secularism •

Islam • Accommodation • Human rights
P. Imbert (*)
Département de Français, Faculty of Arts, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
e-mail: pimbert@uOttawa.ca

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16003-0_4
50 P. Imbert
4.1 Introduction
The role of multiculturalism is to help newcomers and their descendants function

and participate actively in their own development as well as in the development of
their new country. Hence, more thoughtful insights about cultural and economic
participation should be presented by theoreticians of multiculturalism. In the con-
text of the knowledge-based society—where importance is given to a population
with specialized skills, university degrees and professional diplomas, as well as
partial or complete proficiency in more than one language—linking culture, eco-
nomic development and wellbeing is essential. It can be made practical by establish-
ing guidelines for recognition of degrees and diplomas as well as ways to improve
knowledge for immigrants whose skills do not correspond to the level necessary for
an active participation in the new society. This important step can only be beneficial
for immigrants and for the society where they chose to settle. It helps prevent many
educated people from having to work in poorly paid jobs, or to open small conve-
nience stores while hoping that their children studying in the national school system
will make it. This situation is well illustrated in Dionne Brand’s novel entitled What
we all long for (2005). Economic development should be part of theoretical
approaches to multiculturalism. Yet, often it is not. As we will see when discussing
Modood and Kymlicka, theoreticians of multiculturalism tend to separate religion
and culture from economic development and wellbeing.
Modood focuses on religion, culture, values and the state in the UK. Kymlicka
proposes a much more thorough reflexion on multiculturalism in his two books
published in 1995 and 2007, and in numerous recent articles. He deals with theoreti-
cal as well as practical problems and does not shy away from comparisons between
Canada, Latin America and Europe. He effectively deals with religion, values, iden-
tities, the state, and in contradistinction with Modood, he escapes dualism. Escaping
dualism is an important basis for developing a theory of multiculturalism which can
be applied to laws, regulations and daily encounters. It avoids falling into the con-
flictive binaries opposing individual and the group, person and nation. Kymlicka
develops a dynamic triangular relationship between individual rights and minority
rights, and the majority group. This dynamic relationship is implemented in the
Constitution of Canada and in its numerous local and daily applications. He does
not, however, fully link culture and economy.
For an economic perspective on migration and immigration, one has to read
Saunders’ (2010) Arrival City. Saunders is not so much concerned with culture as
with the rejuvenation of cities by migrant flows inside a country or between coun-
tries and continents. Hence, if we want to develop a broader picture of what immi-
grants are looking for (control over their life) when they decide to reorganize their
life and that of their children, we need to discuss more thoroughly multicultural
approaches and the ways they theorise accommodation. Only then, will we be able
to invent new ways to live peacefully and efficiently together in countries which
need to reinvent themselves rapidly. New technologies, new aspirations, the increase
in access to schooling colleges and higher education, particularly for women, the
legitimacy of geographic and symbolic displacements, and globalisation in general
4 Multiple Multiculturalisms: Resentment, Religion and Liberalism 51
call for new ideas. This is why I will discuss religion and the state, the various
linkages between the majority group, the minority group and the individual, values
and relativism, national identities, the situation of immigrants and their desire for
self-directed change, and finally culture and economy.
I will develop a critique of Modood and Kymlicka. Because Kymlicka is a world-
renowned theoretician and a fundamental reference when it comes to multicultural-
ism, other researchers have tried to challenge him by proposing different visions of
multiculturalism outside of a North American context. Like Bonilla Maldonado in
Colombia (2006), they sometimes propose a philosophical basis rooted in non-
liberal thinking that is linked to illiberal behaviours and traditions. Like Modood
(2007), they try to make room for a religious perspective and its recognition in the
UK. As the perspective by Bonilla Maldonado has already been discussed (Imbert
2010), I will concentrate on Tariq Modood’s (2007) book, Multiculturalism, and
compare it with Kymlicka’s perspectives, and then contextualize their approaches
with that of Saunders and its focus on economic development.
4.2 Religion and the State
Modood defines multiculturalism very differently from Kymlicka (1995, 2007). For
Modood, multiculturalism is “the political accommodation of minorities formed by
immigration to Western countries from outside the prosperous West” (2007: 5).
Modood is concerned with multicultural citizenship in the context of post-integration
and poly-ethnicity in the UK. His account is based on a kind of recognition and
belonging that goes beyond culture and mere cultural rights:
They are interpretations of the idea of equality as applied to groups who are constituted by
differentia that have identitarian dimensions that elude socio-economic concepts. The real-
ization of multicultural equality is not possible in a society in which the distribution of
opportunities is restricted by ‘difference’ but it cannot be confined to socio-economic
opportunities. (2007: 153)
His objective is to turn a negative difference into a positive one while emphasiz-
ing the maintenance of cultural difference and its attributes for many generations to
come (2007: 32). As a consequence, he advocates the implementation of parallel
systems of representation, for Muslim groups in particular. They have to be repre-
sented in political parties, trade unions and various bodies (2007: 135): “[…] mul-
ticulturalism can take a hybridic, multiculture, urban melange form; but is does not
have to and indeed should not exclusively do so if one or some groups are not
comfortable with that (for the time being)” (2007: 121). His ideas can be linked to
cultural essentialism and dualism. He is also inclined towards a more militant type
of multiculturalism that differs from Kymlicka’s model of active participation,
which recognizes specific rights but not parallel systems of representation.
Kymlicka’s approach leads to transformative societal and individual processes and
respect for minority groups as well as for the individual, a model particular to a
liberal multiculturalism efficiently organized in Canada.
52 P. Imbert
Modood outlines his concept of multiculturalism and claims that “[…] beginning
with a larger idea of multiculturalism tends, as I will illustrate in the next chapter, in
the case of the philosopher Will Kymlicka, to distort, even marginalize, some of the
specific contemporary issues in relation to the politics of post-immigration, espe-
cially in Western Europe” (Modood 2007: 3).1 He then insists that “the novelty of
contemporary multiculturalism is that first it introduces into Western nation-states a
kind of ethnic-religious mix that is relatively unusual for those states; especially for
western European states” (2007: 8).
According to Modood, Kymlicka recognizes that the state can never be neutral
and that procedural liberalism is an illusion. In procedural liberalism, as it is under-
stood by Charles Taylor (1994)—who also considers this neutrality to be an illu-
sion—the private life is a project separate from that of the public life and the state is
neutral and has no moral purpose. It is capable of incorporating all forms of culture
because it considers these cultures to be equal in value. Dignity is universal and the
individual has the right to form their own identity. Taylor (1994) argues that proce-
dural liberalism has to be replaced by substantive liberalism aligned to a multicul-
tural perspective, to better harmonise equality and difference, and to develop a
complex relationship between the individual, minority and majority group.
While Modood and Kymlicka agree on the pseudo neutrality of the state, the
paths of these two thinkers diverge widely. Modood emphasizes the fact that the state
cannot be neutral towards religion and that state support should go beyond cultural
exemptions, such as those granted to Sikhs about wearing motorcycle helmets, as
underscored by Kymlicka in Multicultural Citizenship (Modood 2007: 26). Modood
wants to go beyond exemptions. He forwards the idea that the state should be linked
(while it is not clear what this linkage would entail or how it would work practically)
to religion, Islam in particular, because certain cultures are centred on religion. He
goes as far as to criticize the “secularist bias” (2007: 27) inherent in Kymlicka’s
liberal approach to multiculturalism. The example of state cooperation with religion
that Modood cites is taken from Germany where different religions are recognized
through fiscal strategies (it is not specified what these strategies are but it could in
part be linked to a tax that every declared Catholic or Lutheran pays on top of their
state tax to assist churches to thrive). He also notes that Kymlicka highlights the
intolerance of Islam in its rejection of apostasy or atheism (1995: 156). Such intoler-
ance, notes Kymlicka, does not comply with liberalism, based not only on freedom
of religion, but also on freedom of conscience and the right to disagree. Modood
rejects this argument especially when it concerns the right to dissent and to disagree
with religion for he claims that it positions Muslims outside of multiculturalism. He
believes that one does not have the right to leave Islam. For him, it is something that
might work in North America but not in Europe. He concludes by saying that the
state may not be linked to one religion, that is, for him, a Christian one, and that
1
Naturally, this does not help to reconsider important and very contested European problems, that
is the participation and recognition of founding minorities in diverse European Nation-States, a
situation which lead to many wars, exclusions, the Shoah and the recent “ethnic cleansing” by
Serbia of Muslim minorities in Bosnia.
[…] the state may need to desist from exclusively promoting one religious community but
this does not imply the privatization of religion or a separation between religion and the
state but may require forging a new, positive relationship with a marginalized religious
minority. (2007: 30)
As this has not yet been realised, Modood claims that the political integration of
Muslim immigrants, especially the Muslim post-immigrant groups, is a major prob-
lem in countries such as Great Britain.
Hence, Modood displaces the basis of Kymlicka’s multiculturalism, which aims to
recognize specific rights, linguistic ones for instance or the right to manifest religious
symbols qualified by Modood as exemptions. Recognizing religion not only as a legit-
imate spiritual expression but as an all-encompassing public way of life related to
distinctive laws and regulation is not what Kymlicka has in mind. It is not what the
liberal government of Ontario had in mind when groups of fundamentalists Muslims
asked for Shari’a law to be recognised in family courts in Ontario. This demand was
rejected because all religious groups need to conform to the Canadian and Ontarian
laws as they apply to all citizens. In Kymlicka’s multiculturalism, the recognition of
specific rights is not designed to be a parallel system of rights, laws and institutions.
Although Modood compares Muslims to other minority groups such as Black, gay
and other ethnic migrant groups, none of these groups call for a broad accommodation
leading to parallel systems of laws and institutions, such as Shari’a law (see Chap. 6
in this volume for more on the recognition of Shari’a law in multicultural societies).
4.3 Protecting the Minority from the Majority

and the Individual from the Minority Group
Modood agrees with Kymlicka’s emphasis on the duty to protect minority groups
from the majority. Yet he criticizes Kymlicka’s assertion that the individual has the
right to be protected from the minority group. Modood’s argument and the rhetoric
he uses when commenting Kymlicka’s approach are worth quoting:
This means that the state must guarantee the rights of not just those who dissent from the
dominant religion2 but also those who dissent from their own religion, or from a particular,
institutionalized interpretation of it. Maybe so […] but it is not an argument for treating
groups formed by religion (millats) differently from ethno-national groups. (2007: 29)
His rhetorical dismissal of the protection of the individual from the minority
groups through the use of the expression “maybe” demonstrates a refusal to further
discuss the matter. It shows that his conception of multiculturalism is intended to
reinforce the coherence of minority groups at the expense of individual rights.
Modood goes further in his criticism of Kymlicka stating that,
[h]e argues that giving the group (or some of its members) the right to restrict the behaviour
of its own members can be potentially unjust and so multicultural citizenship should be
primarily about giving groups the right to protect themselves from persons or forces exter-
nal to the group. (Kymlicka 1995: 35–8), (2007: 29)
2
For Modood, it is the Christian religions in the UK.
54 P. Imbert
His choice of the words “can be potentially unjust” as opposed to Kymlicka’s

warning “this raises the danger of individual oppression” (1995: 36) is symptomatic
of a rhetoric trying to reduce the importance of the individual and his potential as a
subject constituted by and for himself.
The most important bias Modood demonstrates, however, is in the way he com-
pletely distorts Kymlicka’s clear argument about collective rights; distinguishing
internal dissent and external protection. He “forgets” individual protection, the idea
expressed in the first part of the sentence, by arguing to eliminate individual protec-
tion. In fact, he links the idea of restricting individual rights criticized by Kymlicka,
to the idea that “multicultural citizenship should be primarily about giving groups the
right to protect themselves from persons or forces external to the group”. This argu-
ment is based on the elimination of one option, internal protection. Hence, Modood
reduces a complementary perspective into a dualistic conflictive perspective. As is
the case with any dualistic opposition, the argument is reduced to the domination of
one over the other: similar to how the male/female duality results in the domination
of the male, as demonstrated by feminists through deconstruction of traditional male
discourse. Moreover, Modood is incorrect in claiming that “groups have the right to
protect themselves from persons” (2007: 37). Here, his objective is to present the
person, the individual, as a threat to the group. This is the opposite of Kymlicka’s
position that underscores the threat of individual oppression by the group.
But who would these individuals be, what are these forces? Modood does not
give any details. He distorts Kymlicka’s well-balanced argument based on the
importance of Human Rights. Kymlicka insists that the goal is not to give all the
power to a minority group and nothing to the individual. In this context, Kymlicka
emphasizes the fact that “liberals […] should reject internal restrictions which limit
the right of group members to question or revise traditional authorities and prac-
tices” (2007: 37). He then differentiates between different duties and says that, “[i]
t is one thing to require people to do jury duty or to vote, and quite another to com-
pel people to attend a particular church or to follow traditional hierarchical gender
roles. The former are intended to uphold liberal rights and democratic institutions,
the latter restrict these rights in the name of cultural tradition or religious ortho-
doxy” (2007: 36). What is intolerable for Modood, as for most people who argue in
favour of religion, is the fact that people could leave the group and its religious rit-
ual. They forget that the right to leave is a basic democratic right as was already
underscored by Fermin Toro in 1839 in a text entitled Europa and America.
4.4 Values and Relativism
Tariq Modood fights for a multiculturalism that allows for full participation of reli-
gious groups in public sphere. He considers the enclosure of religions in private
domain to be discriminatory, in particular against Muslims (2007). Again his argu-
ments are surprising. He first states that “recognition is not beyond the scope of
moral principle” and that “child sacrifice, cannibalism and sati (widows’
self-immolation) would be unacceptable for just about everybody and clitoridec-

tomy would also be unacceptable for many” (2007: 67). The relativism of “about
everybody” and “for many” is notable. He then states that “conservative views
which do not lead to harmful or unlawful actions cannot be a bar to multicultural
recognition” (2007: 71). However, one could argue that they are harmful in that they
do not recognize the equality between men and women, a basic principle in many
national Constitutions or in national and regional regulations. He then gives the
example of the conservative churches in the US that take active part in political
campaigns and “introduce religion-based issues into politics, such as positions on
abortion, HIV/Aids, homosexuality, stem cell research […]” (2007: 74). However,
he fails to mention that such issues are against multicultural policies and aim at
imposing a homogeneous view of society by banning the public manifestation of the
other. He simultaneously criticises the Christian right “as a potential domestic
obstacle to the civic integration of Muslims and Islam in the US” (2007: 86) without
seeing the contradiction between his arguments. He then suggests that these social
values and norms (including equality between the sexes) are negotiable and that
“they are constantly being reinterpreted, realigned, extended and reformed” (2007:
80). For Kymlicka, however, multiculturalism is neither linked to arbitrariness nor
to relativism; rather it is an extension of Human Rights.
In Canada, multiculturalism is linked to core values which have to be respected.
Recently an investigation was conducted in an Islamic school in Toronto where
teaching material originating in Iran was inappropriate such as referring to Jews as
“treacherous” and “crafty” and encouraging boys “to keep fit for jihad” (Bell 2012).
Multiculturalism is a Canadian value among other Canadian values and its basis is
to treat all immigrants and non-immigrants alike, that is respectfully. The goal is to
help everybody enter the mainstream and penetrate centres of power, and not to
encourage children to dream of excluding or killing others and considering others as
inferior or dangerous because they do not refer to the same religion.
We can note that in Modood’s book (2007), Muslims share core values which are
linked to Islam. These values are not open to discussion, although Modood pays lip
service to the possibility of change in the future. Modood’s perspective is in direct
contradiction with the views of Kymlicka and Taylor (1994). Taylor and Kymlicka
insist that there are values such as freedom of speech (and Satanic Verses by Salman
Rushdie are part of this freedom), gender equality, etc., that are not negotiable in a
liberal democracy. Moreover, Taylor affirms that cultural values are not relative
because, in the context of the nation-states, the culture of each host country, having
been around for a long time, has something particular to offer to newcomers. For
Taylor, it is not enough that we accept the initial hypothesis claiming that values are
equal, which creates the risk of falling into absolute relativism. We must go further
and encourage an understanding of different values and of both their importance
and their consequences. Thus, what is even more important than the recognition of
these values is to know how to perceive others and how to envision dynamic and
efficient relations from constitutional, institutional and practical points of view in
the context of an established society, which has values but which is open to accom-
modate some difference brought by newcomers. All liberal societies share basic
56 P. Imbert
values that are not negotiable, such as the rejection of torture, the refusal of mutilations
like clitoridectomy, equality between men and women, non-discrimination against
sexual orientations, etc., say Taylor and Kymlicka. We can also include in this list
the protection of the individual against the group, be it a majority or a minority
group (on this subject see also Chap. 7 in this volume).
Even if substantive liberalism affirms the state’s non-neutrality—which leads to
the development of a type of multiculturalism ready to defend not only individual
rights, but also those of minorities—it cannot accommodate certain illiberal minori-
ties. They oppress certain subgroups or individuals within their group, or demon-
strate behaviours or values which are discriminatory against certain members of
their group (a situation emphasized by Kymlicka in his 2007 book entitled
Multicultural Odysseys). They subject their members to the authority of traditional
hierarchies, religious or not. Some of their practices, like clitoridectomy or a fatwa
promoting murder, among many others, are not acceptable in a liberal democracy
based on the respect of Human Rights. In contradistinction with these illiberal
minorities, Kymlicka and Taylor understand multiculturalism as a dynamic process
of active participation in an established liberal and democratic society which has
been chosen by newcomers because of its values, its economy and other opportuni-
ties. Both sides, those long-established citizens and newcomers, need to blend and
to learn to share cultural differences peacefully so as to give access to the basic
principles that first attracted people to the country in question.
4.5 National Identities
In Modood’s book, the call for the negotiation of values and norms tries to prepare
the reader for the rejection of the claim that in the new society, which is the UK,
certain core values are of great importance. His view is that national identity is weak
in contemporary Britain. Modood emphasises that in Canada, in Australia and
Malaysia multiculturalism has been coincidental with “a nation building project”
(2007: 147). In the UK, it is the opposite:
But is the goal of wanting to become British, to be accepted as British and to belong to
Britain is not a worthwhile goal for Commonwealth migrants and their progeny, what then
are they supposed to integrate into? And if there is nothing strong, purposive and inspiring
to integrate into, why bother with integration? (2007: 151)
This perceived weakness being the opposite of the view of Britain as the centre
of a powerful empire can be linked to what the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood
described in her book entitled Survival about Canada in the 1979s. At that time
Canadian identity was perceived as weak because of the sequel of British coloniza-
tion and the impact of US cultural and economic influence. This alleged weakness
however—based on a capacity to digest many cultural influences—, was turned into
strength, thanks to a multiculturalism that incorporated a purposive nation-building
dynamic and to processes reinforcing the knowledge of Canada’s past and contem-
porary role in the world. The idea of a weak Canadian identity was underscored by
Neil Bissoondath in Selling Illusions (1994). In this book, Bissoondath rejected the
first version of multiculturalism and its bureaucratic, dualistic and essentialist per-
spectives, which did little to help immigrants participate actively in Canadian soci-
ety. Yet, Bissoondath’s goal was to reinforce the integration of immigrants in
Canadian society that is exemplary in upholding democratic values.
In Modood’s book, claiming that British identity is weak helps him argue that
there are no core values worthy of attention in the UK and that they cannot be con-
nected to meaningful definitions: “Brown wants to derive a set of core values (lib-
erty, fairness, enterprise and so on)3 from a historical narrative yet such values, even
if they could singly or in combination be given a distinctive British take, are too
complex and their interpretation and priority too contested to be amenable to be set
into a series of meaningful definitions” (2007: 152).4 Efficiently managing cultural
encounters, however, is always complex, as emphasized by Finkenthal (2008) and by
Fontille and Imbert (2012). Even more astonishing, in a display of what could be
qualified as a reverse colonialist perspective, Modood acknowledges the use of the
dualistic argument of “either…or” to dismiss any basis for sharing core values:
“Definitions of core values will either be too bland or too divisive and the idea that
there has to be a schedule of value statements to which every citizen is expected to
sign up is not in the spirit of a multilogical citizenship (Brown 2005 cited in Modood
2007)”.5 Let’s consider the shift from multicultural to multilogical citizenship, which
is not problematized, commented upon or explained. Moreover, we have to note the
next argument: “National identity should be woven in debate and discussion, not
reduced to a list” (2007: 153). Naturally, it is not in the spirit of anybody, and par-
ticularly not in the spirit of Gordon Brown to reduce national citizenship to a list.
In relation to national identity, Modood distinguishes between two definitions of
multiculturalism: a broad definition that includes new social movements (such as
gay and feminist) and founding minority groups who have been part of a nation
since its creation, or for a long time (such as Afro-Americans in the US or French
Canadians in Canada); and a more restricted definition that corresponds to post-
immigration multicultural realities. From the outset, one can say that Modood does
not have a full grasp of multiculturalism in Canada and of its link to national iden-
tity. It is particularly clear when he speaks of the Francophone minority in a recent
article written with Nasar Meer (Meer and Modood 2012). These authors say that
for Canadian multiculturalism
3
Here is Gordon Brown’s sentence: “When we look at history and at the values and ideas that
shape British national identity, I would want to stress a belief in tolerance and liberty, a sense of
civic duty, a sense of fair play, a sense of being open to the world” (Roundtable 2005: 1).
4
Here is the answer to this claim by Gordon Brown: “To get back to Tariq’s broader point, I am not
proposing some formulaic list of values that embodies Britain for the next 200 years. Equally, I
don’t think it’s good enough just to have all these ideas floating around and to say the debate is an
end in itself” (Roundtable 2005: 6).
5
This sentence and the reference to Brown, is not clear. Is this said by Gordon Brown? No. Is it in
the roundtable? Not even. So, why is there a reference to Brown after this sentence? Let’s also note
that it is a roundtable and that Gordon Brown is only one of the many participants whose names
are as follows: Neal Ascherson, Billy Bragg, Gordon Brown, Linda Colley, David Goodhart, Eric
Kaufmann, David Lammy, Tariq Modood, Roger Scruton.
58 P. Imbert
[…] the focus was from the start on constitutional and land issues in a way that informed
definitions of nationhood and related to unresolved legal questions concerning the entitle-
ments and status of indigenous peoples, not to mention the further issue of the rise of a
nationalist and secessionist movement in French–speaking Quebec. (Meer and Modood
2012: 180)
However, the Québécois are not part of a multicultural policy. As emphasized by

Pierre Elliot Trudeau in his essay published in 1967 and entitled Le fédéralisme et
la société canadienne française, the Francophones and the Anglophones are the two
founding nations of Canada and are at the root of bilingual policies6 but are not part
of multiculturalism. In Trudeau’s view, multicultural policies were thought of as a
means to break the dualistic nationalism of the two founding groups by recognizing
the importance of other voices and generating new dynamics in Canadian society,
which could pull Canada out of a dangerous political conflict. If, however,
Francophones are not part of multicultural policies and regulations, they are linked
to them, just as Anglophones are, because multiculturalism is relational and connective.
It deeply transforms the context of the social and political life. The consequence is,
for instance, that Québec as a mostly francophone province (but a linguistic minority
in Canada) created its own version of accommodation for immigrants. This version
is called interculturalism (Bouchard 2012) and is similar to Canadian multicultural-
ism except that the children of immigrants have to study in francophone schools
(Law 101) (on European interculturalism see Chap. 9). Hence, they do not become
unconscious agents of assimilation by reducing the percentage of French speakers
in Québec. This decision is also meant to help immigrants integrate with franco-
phone minorities of Canada (and the francophone national majority in Québec).7
Hence, one of the core values of the minority and a very important feature of its
national character, French language, is protected while it gives the opportunity to
children of immigrants, most of whom speak the language of their parents, to
become trilingual, as they all learn English as well. Being trilingual is an important
advantage in a globalized world that no longer relies only on power relationships
limited by the borders of Nation-States.
4.6 Immigrants and Self-Directed Change: Active

Incorporation
There is no place in Modood’s book for the hopes and aspirations of people who
immigrate, and whose objective is to actively participate in the new society and
perhaps overcoming limits imposed on them in the home country or within the
religion that shaped their early years. This was an important criticism made by
6
This is only one element in the complex vision aiming at protecting group rights that has been
outlined by Trudeau and then theorized by Kymlicka. Modood then opposes the Australian model
in which multiculturalism “[…] developed more as a means to better integrate new immigrants”
(Meer and Modood 2012: 180). This was, however, an important aim of Trudeau’s vision and of all
the multiculturalist policies in Canada.
7
Hence, interculturalism in Québec is very different from interculturalism in Europe.
Kymlicka when he considered European cases (except the UK) and the way
immigrants have been considered and settled. Kymlicka understands that European
perspectives on migration have been constructed antagonistically. For example, in
Germany, the Turkish and the Kurdish workers have not been seen, from the outset,
as potential permanent citizens but as temporary workers. This is what led Angela
Merkel to declare multiculturalism a failure in Germany a few years ago. From a
Canadian point of view, there has never been a consistent multicultural policy in
Germany or in any European country except in the UK. This is well emphasized by
experts on internal and external migrations, such as Doug Saunders in Arrival Cities
or by Quebecois journalist Rima Elkouri in 2009 in an interview with Algerian
immigrants. In the daily newspaper, La Presse, Elkouri clearly pointed out the wish
for active incorporation to be related to a desire for lack of differentiation (2009). She
follows Algerian immigrants in Montreal over a period of 6 months. Sabrina, an
immigrant from Algeria, claims to have come to Quebec to live differently than she
did in her native country: Sabrina explains that in her workplace in Alger, only she
and one other woman didn’t wear the veil. “La deuxième est aussi rendue ici, à
Montréal!” (The second one is also here, in Montréal). She asks herself serious ques-
tions when she sees veiled women here in Canada. “Je n’ai pas fait 6,000 km pour
vivre comme là-bas” (I did not travel 6,000 km to live the same way that I did there)
(2009: 3). As for her husband, Hocine, he “parle désormais de l’Algérie comme de
son ‘ex-pays’” (he now speaks of Algeria as his former country) (2009: 3). In other
words, he doesn’t feel like a stranger in Canada, but does with regards to Algeria.
More and more, the place of birth becomes secondary for people who migrate with
the goal of having a different life in a democratic society that expands possibilities
and allows for the application of accumulated knowledge and self-definition.
4.7 Modood’s Rhetoric: Between Ellipse and Contradiction
Although Modood strategically uses theories and concepts related to fluidity, such
as his recognition of identities as being relational (Benessaieh 2010), his reading is
often based on an essentialist interpretation of texts and discourses. For instance,
despite his attempt to demonstrate that a modernity based on homogeneity has
evolved into the formation of multicultural societies, he presents a stereotyped
image of minority groups, “[s]ome women, he writes, focused on their sexual dif-
ferences from men and postulated that women were naturally more caring, consen-
sual and empathetic” (2007: 1). In fact, these static and pseudo-natural attributions
are what most feminists criticised and discarded in the 1970s because it was per-
ceived to be a weapon that allowed men to keep them away from the public sphere.
This allows Modood to present all Muslim women as if they rejected the West. He
emphasizes the fact that Muslim women “challenge leading forms of feminism
which portray the wearing of a headscarf as a form of oppression but regard the
sexualisation of public space […] as emancipatory” (2007: 42). Modood neglects to
mention the fact that most feminist groups criticise media processes and advertise-
ments for their sexual exploitation, nor does he recognise the fact that many Muslim
60 P. Imbert
women criticise the oppression imposed on them by traditional religious groups or

by Muslim men.
Modood also tends to neglect important situations through the use of elliptical
language. When, for instance, he writes about the “Satanic Verses affair” of 1989,
he fails to mention the fact that through a fatwa Salman Rushdie was put at risk of
being killed by anyone who could successfully carry out the murder, an act of hatred
intolerable for liberal democracies and an order rooted in the worst kind of ortho-
doxy negating Human Rights values and any multicultural perspective. The word
“affair” is used strategically to avoid discussing an unacceptable phenomenon in a
religious Islamic orthodoxy.
Modood’s arguments are often based on sentences glossing over what could be
negative for Muslims in the conflictive world he is leading us to. When talking about
extremism, he emphasizes that it enters the domestic arena from outside: “The gov-
ernment having created the political extremism through its foreign policies […]”
(2007: 139). Hence the British and the US governments are to be blamed for Jihadist
sentiments (2007: 150) and for the fact that 22 % of British Muslims agreed to the
London bombings. Needless to say that this dualistic and one-sided perspective on
foreign policy are not present in Kymlicka’s work, because multiculturalism is not
about foreign policy but about building together a better life inside the new country.
Yet, these resentments expressed by immigrants should be seriously taken into con-
sideration and be dealt with by implementing educative policies that make immi-
grants aware not only of cultural differences but also of the fact that resentments
produced in the society where they migrate to can be very different from that of their
original country. This problem is well dramatized in a Canadian novel entitled
Cockroach by Rawi Hage (2010), an immigrant from the Middle East. For the
second-generation, resentment is certainly related to the process of accommodation
within the new society and it should be linked to new studies dealing with multicul-
tural perspectives and economic processes, but so far it remains as a research project
(Imbert 2014−2017).
Some arguments are based on contradictions such as when Modood claims to
privilege post-immigration while also claiming that he nonetheless gets some of its
inspiration from the very groups he is not considering, namely rooted Afro-
Americans and their long, hard battle for recognition. He also says that if Muslims
deserve recognition, one is almost inevitably prioritising religion over other features
(2007: 133) while saying (2007: 134) that religious dimension may not be the most
salient one for Muslims: “it can be a sense of family and community or for collec-
tive political advancement […]” (2007: 134). He nonetheless prioritises this identity
(2007: 109) in his book.
Modood goes awry when he says that Kymlicka’s multiculturalism is anti-
immigrant. But it is his dislike for Kymlicka’s liberalism and secular multiculturalism
that compels him to make such accusations. The motif behind Modood’s negative
representation of Kymlicka’s multiculturalism may come from his initial assump-
tion that immigrants arrive in the prosperous West feeling different or inferior. It is
nonetheless useful to be aware of this feeling and important to recognize that it can
lead to resentment. And resentment (Angenot 1997), and its control or elimination
through successful active participation in the new society for instance, is one of the
basis for establishing a world that is founded on sharing and on security. Resentment
can be studied and sometimes avoided “by choosing people who have proven they
can integrate into Canadian society and meet its labour market needs” says Stephen
Harper (Manila 2012: A4). He explains “The Canadian Experience Class fast-tracks
permanent residency application for skilled foreign workers and graduate students
who have spent time in Canada on temporary permits or student visas” (Manila
2012: A4). Yet, the objective of Modood’s book is particularly tied to European
situations and policies or non-policies such as not recognizing from the beginning
immigrants as future citizens but only as temporary workers as was the case in
Germany. These contexts and situations are very different from the Canadian and
Australian contexts. Hence Modood calls for the following:
[…] today the appropriate response to the new Muslim challenges is pluralistic institutional
integration, rather than an appeal to a radical public-private separation in the name of secu-
larism. The approach that is being argued here then consists of: 1. the extension of a policy
of difference to include appropriate religious identities and organizations. 2. A reconceptu-
alisation of secularism from the concept of neutrality and the strict public/private divide to
a moderate and evolutionary secularism based on institutional adjustments. (2007: 78)
But what does evolutionary secularism practically and clearly signify for
Modood? According to his demonstration, it is secularism that admits the progres-
sive influence of religion within or on the State. In other words, we have here a
power struggle between diverging theoretical views pertaining to religious and sec-
ular perspectives.8 The religious perspective in Modood’s book aims at transforming
the basis of liberal democracy according to specific elements particular to tradi-
tional Muslim culture. We can point out, for instance, the predominance of the
group over the individual, the negative view on the self-belonging and on having the
right to leave the group, the inability to theorize an inclusive and complex society
whose established majority and minority groups have something important to say to
newcomers. Modood also forgets values linked to Human Rights, and also notably,
as it was stated by Sabrina in the interview of La Presse, the fact that people came
as immigrants to change their lives, to go beyond restrictions imposed in the country
they left, and to expand economically, educationally and culturally.
8
Indeed, we must not forget Bissoondath’s criticism at the time of the publication of Boyd’s report
in Ontario, which suggests recognizing of the decisions of the Shari’a Courts in family affairs.
Bissoondath criticizes the Boyd Report and appeals to “la séparation de l’État et de la religion, à
la liberté des musulmanes; à la solidarité sociale et juridique de notre société” (the separation of
State and religion, the freedom of Muslim women, and the social and judicial solidarity of our
society). Bissoondath comes close to Alain Touraine, suggesting that “concrètement, nous ne pou-
vons reconnaître de droits culturels qu’à la condition que soit accepté ce que nous reconnaissons
comme nos principes fondamentaux, c’est-à-dire la croyance dans la pensée rationnelle et
l’affirmation qu’il existe des droits personnels qu’aucune société, aucun État n’a le droit
d’enfreindre” (concretely, we can only recognize cultural rights if what we consider to be our basic
principles are recognized, that is the belief in rationality and in personal rights that no society and
no State has the right to jeopardize) (Bissoondath 2005: 118).
62 P. Imbert
Modood fails to mention this possibility in his book, which focuses mainly on
the problems of post-immigration experienced by second- and third-generations,
that is, by the youth born in England who have felt the very real sting of exclusion.
If so, we could suggest that the reason behind resentment felt by these generations
might be a failure to use Kymlicka’s theories and to translate them into policy,
although Kymlicka underscores that his theories cannot be applied without thought-
ful reflexion anywhere due to very different power relationship and historical mis-
understandings (2007). This resentment might also be linked to serious problems
not related to multicultural policies, such as the absence of decent housing and
schools, the strong presence of racist discourse and attitudes, the control of certain
professions by power groups; these conditions tend to prevent the active participa-
tion of immigrants and their descendants in the mainstream. All this demonstrates
the need to correlate culture and economy. Hence, what Modood’s book offers is not
a thorough argumentation against Kymlicka’s multiculturalism. Rather, it makes the
case for the need to study and take seriously the existing resentment among second
and third generation migrants.
4.8 Culture and Economy
Many immigrants want to realise the potentials that were suppressed in their coun-
try of origin and that can be actualised in their new country. As the Algerian couple
point out, this desire is the valorisation of the individual and its multiple potentials:
“Ici, l’individu a une plus grande liberté. La société algérienne est plus codifiée”
(Here the individual has more freedom. The Algerian society is more codified)
(2009: 3). The valorisation of the individual happens with the possibility to realize
one’s own potential in a public space that allows one to blend in with others. Many
immigrants wish to blend-in in the knowledge-based society (Imbert 2010), and
build new lives based on intercultural encounters and hybridity and not on defensive
reactions against their new society. This dynamic is perhaps more common in
Canada, Australia and the US than in Europe. It is the product of accommodative
laws, multicultural practices and regulations. These contexts afford space and time
to people from very different backgrounds to participate in, and to have access to,
the benefits of the new society. As emphasized by Joan Delaney in 2006, “Even
though most of his family members are Muslim, Boudjenane says that ‘because his
sister-in-law and niece are Christians, the whole family celebrates both Christmas
and Ramadan. That’s what being Canadian is all about’, he says”.
This desire to succeed and to be recognized is well-emphasized by Doug
Saunders in Arrival City: The Final Migration and Our Next World (2010) but not
in Modood’s (2007) book and not too evidently in Multicultural Citizenship (1995)
by Kymlicka. Yet this desire is what really powers peoples to migrate, to work hard
and to find in themselves the resources to reinvent themselves and their world. In his
book, Saunders analyses “the creation of a new culture between village and city, and
thus, the hybridization of traditional cultures into a new one where women in
particular have a new role and where youth can aspire to a better future where they
can expand their capacities and be rewarded socially and economically for it” (2010:
47). He not only analyses regulations and policies that allow one to own a piece of
land, or a small house or to create a shop, but also the semiotic use of space. In the
UK, space allows for the organization of a private small business and for the family
to live together upstairs because streets in the suburbs are made of small townhouses
where people can create a business and have the apartment upstairs. In France, on
the contrary, the huge state run apartment buildings in the banlieues, cannot be
organized in this way because they are far removed from the creative activities of
the people in the street. In this case, work and family life are disconnected and cut
from the street and its dull and empty atmosphere. For Saunders, the dwellings
organized by new immigrants “[…] are not mere slums housing the outcasts and
failures of the urban society, nor are they temporary encampments for transient
labour. They are the key mechanism for the city regeneration” (2010: 47).
Both Modood and Saunders speak of the very poor, the rejected, and the despised,
in the context of Asia, Europe, the Americas and Canada. Yet their perspectives are
very different. While Modood starts his thesis by stating that the immigrants he
speaks of are poor, he never analyses their perspectives and strategies to progress
economically and educationally. He develops a thesis founded on the desire to build
up a coherent and militant group on the basis of religion. Saunders analyses the
strategies of migrating people and immigrants in the light of the search for a better
future and of the challenges and obstacles they encounter. A pragmatic, down to
earth, postcolonial and liberal perspective (Saunders) is very different from that of
the discursively left-leaning and religiously traditional Muslim perspective
(Modood). Modood, however, sometimes recognizes that through immigration,
immigrants often gain a lot economically, “groups such as the Indians, Chinese,
Koreans and some other East-Asians, for example, are developing a more middle-
class profile than whites” (2007: 44), a fact also acknowledged by Saunders in
Arrival City (2010).
Although Modood recognizes that many immigrants succeed in getting a better
economic life, he does not really elaborate the means and the kind of cultural
accommodation that makes this success possible. Neither does he talk about
Muslims, in particular, succeeding in their professional fields. This is, however, the
main focus of Saunders in Arrival City. Saunders (2010) studies the means taken
and the adaptive capacities, cultural and otherwise, that allow whole populations to
improve their lives by moving from rural areas to arrival cities (sometimes terrible
slums) either in the same country or to other countries. There are many differences
between the traditional life in the countryside and life in arrival cities. Among those,
one can speak of the use of time and the organization of the week. Many immigrants
succeed in businesses because they work in their shops 7 days a week and long
hours every day, while people born in the host country tend to close their shops
earlier. This means that, for instance, the Muslim way of life that includes five
prayers a day has to be changed in the scramble to build and keep a successful busi-
ness. Hence, culture not only signifies a set of traditions of fixed rituals but the ways
in which groups use time, have access to rest, and this influences attitudes towards
64 P. Imbert
time and space. How migrants make new use of time and space in their destination
can facilitate their success in an urban setting, deriving wealth from production,
consumption and efficiency in services and among the competition. It is also worth
examining the ways in which traditions and self-identification can foster business
and competition in the new society. There are many factors behind migrant work:
migrants may want to get rich or pay for an education for their children; discrimina-
tion may keep them from finding unionized paid work; they usually all want to be
able to compete more efficiently in an urban context and/or in a liberal capitalist
society.
Many of these societies changed certain municipal regulations in the 1980s a
situation which can be linked to a competition between religious and knowledge-
based liberal discourses (Imbert 2014). Canada, for example, decided many years
ago to stop the mandatory closing of stores on Sundays, the Christian day of rest,
and to engage in a 7 day weeks of work and shopping. It is worth noting that the
7 days a week production/consumption cycle is part of societies that are no longer
largely based on industrial production, but rather on services and on knowledge-
based professions that allow productivity and exchange of ideas and information
through networks often accessible from home. Hence, one can now use time pro-
ductively 24 h a day, so that the time of rest is now dependent on this production and
consumption pace. This leads individuals to rest at different times and to have their
meditative period adapted to a constant change of timetable. This may be one of the
reasons behind the dissemination of yoga which can provide a time and space of rest
and spiritual wellbeing more easily accessible than religions and their fixed periods
of spirituality and meditation. This aspect of culture, related to time and space, the
spirit of innovation and business ethic, and their significant impacts on daily life and
economic wellbeing, especially in the context of the biggest migration the world has
ever seen, is neglected by both Modood and Kymlicka; migration pertains not only
to poor people but also to educated specialists in many scientific, economic and
cultural fields. For them, to start a new life in another country is less of a problem
particularly when they see that many countries such as Canada compete to entice
them to join other Canadians in a stimulating life full of potential for themselves
and for their children.
This very contemporary dynamic is explored by many researchers such as Vivek
Wadhwa (2012) showing that nowadays many people hesitate to immigrate to the
US because immigration regulations are over-bureaucratised and receiving a green
card can take years. This red tape jeopardises the dynamic that allowed so many
immigrants to create Silicon Valley and many important start-up companies, and
eventually end up in the Fortune 500 directories of big companies among which
40 % have been founded by immigrants or children of immigrants. The Prime
Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, is keenly aware of this fact and the Government
of Canada has recently switched its attitude from a passive operation accepting
people on a first come first served basis “to one where newcomers are chosen
according to how they can benefit Canada” (Manila 2012). In migration and post-
migration, it is very important to recognize the links between culture and economy,
between culture and access to professions. The strong contemporary relationship
between culture, economy, work and housing, encounter with alterity, global
competition and the knowledge-based society changes the whole dynamic. The
switch from rural areas to cities and megalopolis as well as the fact that now, all over
the planet, millions and millions of young people go to college and university and
have professions in demand is not emphasized enough. Further, Saunders (2010)
suggests that these young people with skills and degrees who are ready to emigrate
are the most ambitious and energetic among their population. They are ready for
change and wish to actively engage in a life based on change and geographic as well
as symbolic displacements. Naturally, this attitude is not always displayed by peo-
ple who were born in a traditional area, who were expected to stay within this space
and who were forced to move due to wars or other negative and unforeseeable
impacts. One has to distinguish the goals of immigrants and those of refugees.
4.9 Conclusion
Tariq Modood’s book entitled Multiculturalism is not about accommodation and

multiculturalism unlike Kymlicka’s or Taylor’s perspective. It is a book trying to
convince readers to accept an all-encompassing religious way of life in a secular
democratic liberal society—presented as a society based on “radical secularism”
(2007: 132)—while simultaneously saying that “there is no special problem with
Islam” (2007: 132). This book is one among many others that are trying to define
another path after the impact of the well-structured and complex but not compli-
cated theories developed by Kymlicka during the past 20 years and their influence
on the reorganization of institutions and socioeconomic dynamics in a liberal
social-democratic Canada and worldwide (Arocena 2012).
Other books such as Bonilla Maldonado’s (2006) deal with the new multicultural
Constitution of Colombia and criticize the fact that one cannot accommodate illib-
eral traditional indigenous groups in Kymlicka’s perspective (Imbert 2011). Reading
Bonilla Maldonado, one can see that if he refers to Kymlicka’s research, he recon-
textualises it so as to adapt it to Colombia, which has almost no immigrants but
many emigrants. Hence, the multicultural Constitution of Colombia is only applied
to founding groups, that is Afro-Colombian and indigenous groups, a situation very
different from what happens in Canada.
Moreover, as Kymlicka himself emphasizes in Multicultural Odysseys, multicul-
turalism is linked to the recognized importance of Human Rights by states and
people. Multiculturalism seeks to expand these rights, a goal with which a group of
important Colombian thinkers agree fully (Parra et al. 2010). Multiculturalism does
not seek to restrict rights through the imposition of traditions or regulations which
are incompatible with a liberal democracy and it is not intended to accept illiberal
traditions such as abandoning sick or old people alone in the jungle. Hence, these
books, that of Daniel Bonilla Maldonado and that of Tariq Modood are interesting
because they show how thinkers can de/recontextualise theories and practices for
religious and political purposes. Yet, they are not particularly useful for implementing
66 P. Imbert
efficient and peaceful policies and practices in a democracy turned towards a future
based on sharing Human Rights and giving access to all to the possibility of expand-
ing one’s capacities and of creating a new life where one belongs to oneself.
Multiculturalism is a framework that enlarges the cultural, economic and politi-
cal arena and fosters access to multiple elements in society such as work through
antidiscrimination legislations, through public discourse, etc., but it also establishes
limits. These limits are based on the recognition of established values such as the
belief in individual rights that no society or state institutions have a right to jeop-
ardise. As stated in the introduction, the role of multiculturalism is to help newcom-
ers and their descendants to function and to participate actively in their own
development and in the development of the new country. Consequently, a multicul-
tural state tends to foster exchanges and métissages, which means that many
Muslims should be able to live their faith in a new context based on limits that are
different from those imposed in their country of origin. Multiculturalism opens new
doors for immigrants, especially for Muslim immigrant women (see, however,
Moller Okin 2008) whose perspectives are much broadened by the opportunities
offered to them in their new country.
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preneurial talent. Wharton Digital Press, Philadelphia
Part II
Justice and Education as Key Dimensions
of Multiculturalism
Chapter 5
Disenchantments: Counter-Terror Narratives
and Conviviality
Michele Grossman
History, in the human sense, is a language net cast backwards.

George Steiner (1975)
Abstract Drawing on recent research into Australian community perspectives on

radicalisation, extremism and terrorism, this essay adopts a critical terrorism studies
approach in considering the orientation and engagement strategies of counter-terror
narratives in multicultural societies. Paul Gilroy’s work on multicultures and con-
viviality (After empire: melancholia or convivial culture? Routledge, London/New
York, 2004; Crit Q 48(4):27–45, 2006) is used as a key lens through which to think
through issues surrounding counter-terror narrative discourses, their impacts and
their aftermaths: which are heard, which aren’t and what stories have yet to be told.
What do counter-terror narratives’ current trajectories and limits tell us about coun-
tering violent extremist futures?
Keywords Counter-narrative • Muslims • Terrorism • Discourse • Denizens •

Multiculturalism • Conviviality
This chapter takes up the opportunities offered by critical approaches to the study of
terrorism (Jackson 2007; Jackson et al. 2009) to examine the disposition and impacts
of successive waves of counter-narrative theory and strategy since 9/11, particularly
in relation to the challenges of countering violent extremism in the context of con-
temporary multicultural state polities and the lived experience of culturally diverse
This chapter was first published in Critical Studies on Terrorism (Routledge/Taylor & Francis),
appearing in its online format in July 2014. Please see www.tandfonline.com.
M. Grossman (*)
Centre for Cultural Diversity and Wellbeing, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia
e-mail: michele.grossman@vu.edu.au

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16003-0_5
72 M. Grossman
societies. The primary argument advanced in this discussion is that successive

waves of counter-narrative theory and strategy have, through a continuing commit-
ment to the ambivalent positioning of Islamic belief systems and adherents as alien
to “Western” values and ethics, created fissures in counter-narrative messaging that
foster the emergence of alternative narratives within communities that reframe and
re-narrativise terrorist events and actors in concerning ways.
Mainstream approaches to counter-narrative thus potentially both undermine the
social cohesion of multiculturalism that is so critical to the task of repealing violent
extremism in contemporary nation-states, and also create an environment in which
highly salient modes of alternative narratives continue to flourish. At the same time,
they also miss opportunities to develop new counter-narrative strategies that move
beyond the “negative case” of agonistically conceived storytelling by responding to
community desires for more affirmative narratives around belonging, cooperation
and conviviality.
The analysis developed later draws significantly on two sources: first, the theo-
retical work of Paul Gilroy (2004, 2006) on multicultures and conviviality,
discussed in detail throughout this chapter (see also Chap. 10), and second, primary
research with an Australian national sample conducted by Hussein Tahiri and
Michele Grossman (2013) on contemporary community views concerning the
prevalence and mitigation of radicalisation, violent extremism and terrorism in the
Australian context.
Within the critical terrorist studies framework, postcolonial and cultural studies
analyses of terror and counter-terror—their genealogies, antecedents, dispositions
and critical and cultural manoeuvres—have played an important role in helping to
reframe issues of terrorism and counter-terrorism in relation to the history and poli-
tics of modernity, discourse, representation, and the geopolitics of domination and
globalisation. For example, Boehmer and Morton, in Terrorism and the Postcolonial
(2009), investigate:
What is in fact at stake in the constitution of terrorism as an object of knowledge in the
social sciences and humanities? […] How do we interpret the colonial contours we discern
within the dimensions of present-day terror? What exactly does the emerging field of terror-
ism studies reveal about the political and cultural values of contemporary Western culture
and its histories of violence? (2009: 8)
Meanwhile, others such as Morey and Yaqin in Framing Muslims: Stereotyping

and Representation (2011) and Arshin Adib-Moghaddam (2013) in A Metahistory
of the Clash of Civilisations turn their attention to the representational frames and
discourses in popular and media culture within which, resourced by a relentlessly
iterative “clash regime” (Adib-Moghaddam 2013) (see also Chaps. 2 and 9), seemingly
incommensurable images and rhetorics of “Muslims” and “the West” are circulated
and deployed, and with what effects.
In line with this critical strand focusing on the relationship between imperial
pasts and present modes of terror, Paul Gilroy, in After Empire (2004) and again in
his essay “Multiculture in times of war” (2006), explores the impacts of
postcolonialism’s aftermath on former imperial powers. His discussion includes a
5 Disenchantments: Counter-Terror Narratives and Conviviality 73
focus on the problems posed by fidelity to anachronistic structures and institutions

that have failed to keep pace with deep and sometimes radical economic and
cultural change on a global scale. Gilroy’s analysis centres on what he diagnoses as
the pathology of British melancholia for the imperial past, which he understands
to oscillate between two poles of collective social affect, mania and mourning.
This national pathology, he argues, produces an epistemically and sometimes mate-
rially violent rejection of the multicultural British present, one that is accompanied
by deep-seated fear, anxiety and apocalyptic fantasies concerning global multicul-
tural futures. Forged in the smelter of post-9/11 analysis, Gilroy’s prescription for
how Western nation-states might move beyond the transnational ills of postcolonial
melancholia rests on the antidote of what he terms “convivial culture”, to which I
return below.
While significant work has been done on analysing the discursive and material
politics of both terrorist narratives and those state and quasi-state narratives that
oppose them (Jackson 2005), less attention has been given by postcolonial and cul-
tural studies critics to the culturally and politically strategic field of counter-terror
narratives, which seek to diminish or redirect the influence of narratives embracing
violent extremism. Gilroy’s analysis in After Empire becomes useful in thinking
about the limits and possibilities of contemporary counter-narratives of violent
extremism in Western countries at a time when, increasingly, national narratives of
tolerance and social cohesion are vying for oxygen and impact with transnational
narratives of threat, fear and uncertainty. In some cases, both narrative modes are
driven by the same or different tiers of government in a given national context. In
other instances, state-sanctioned communications continue to promote discourses,
however ambivalent or qualified, of social cohesion that are vigorously offset or
undermined by popular media representations of cultural difference as risk, threat
and incommensurable “Otherness”. These are frequently aimed, particularly in the
context of terrorism, at Muslim communities and Islam more generally (Yasmeen
2008; Rane et al. 2010).
If “immigration as war” is a dominant frame for Britain and Europe in the current
global climate, as Gilroy argues it is (2006), then public modes of narrative and
storytelling are a crucial theatre of operations for the waging of this conflict. And
state-sponsored counter-narrative strategies focused on violent extremism—bound
up as they are with wars at once discursive and material, virtual and embodied—are
a critical part of the mix. Like other stories that belong to but also exceed the limits
of those communities in which they take shape and are transformed, they are caught
up in a language-net of histories and horizons never entirely of their own making.
I ask here whether it is possible to “reclaim counter-narrative” by thinking, along
with Gilroy, about what the concept of convivial culture might offer to the task of
reorienting counter-narrative strategies toward the horizon of living with and in
multicultures, and what this might mean for engagements around mitigating violent
extremism. A key premise explored in this chapter is thus whether, as Gilroy pro-
poses, “solidarity and diversity” can co-exist in a post-9/11 world (Gilroy 2006: 29)
(on this question’s application to the US see, also, Chap. 2).
74 M. Grossman
In the Tahiri and Grossman (2013) study, Community and Radicalisation,

interviews and focus groups conducted in 2011 with more than 500 participants in
every Australian state and territory, including both Muslim and non-Muslim com-
munities, suggest that while, as I go on to explore later, mainstream counter-narrative
strategies in Western countries continue to position Muslim citizens ambivalently in
relation to inclusive counter-narrative orientations, such strategies continue to
ignore other, salient grassroots narratives that constitute a less well-recognised but
powerful alternative mode of ‘counter-narrative’. These alternative narrative streams
consistently attempt to reposition and reframe key events and key political moments
in ways that complicate and trouble standard counter-narrative messaging around
the perils and impacts of violent extremism.
5.1 Counter-Terror Narratives
As its generic name suggests, counter-narrative exists only in relation to its oppos-
ing term a variety of positional or relational discourse, at once overtly constructed
and implicitly normative, that seeks to disrupt, dismantle or speak back to other
narrative trajectories that exert discursive power. Counter-narratives have a long
history as objects of study in the realm of resistance discourse theory and practice,
particularly in relation to subaltern narrative frameworks that struggle against hege-
monic forms of knowledge and discourse saturating a given field of social power
relations (Bamberg and Andrews 2004).
Counter-narratives are thus always at some level strategic narratives, with certain
aims and targets in mind. They are designed to resist, reframe, divert, subvert or
disable other stories and other voices that vie for or already command discursive
power. In the discursive force-field of opposing violent extremism, counter-terror
narratives are intimately bound up with a grammar of terrorism that has “in recent
years become the bass note to Western government rhetoric” (Boehmer and Morton
2009: 6). These stories use both cognitive and affective strategies to actively reposi-
tion and reclaim the allegiance of those who embrace or support narratives that
justify or extol violence by claiming a religious basis in Islam for their actions (Al
Raffie 2012). Proponents of counter-terror narratives see them as one kind of inter-
vention in a suite of preventive strategies intended to forestall violent extremism at
the early stages of terrorist radicalisation and recruitment (NCTb 2010), or, in some
cases, to win back the “hearts and minds” of those already aligned with extremist
perspectives (Jacobson 2010: 73). Cognitively, they seek to undermine the political
and religious logics of neo-jihadist narratives; affectively, they work to reduce these
narratives’ psychosocial seductions.
In 2010, a significant public policy report, Countering Violent Extremist
Narratives (CVEN), was published by the National Coordinator for Counter-
Terrorism in the Netherlands. The report drew together the work of a consortium of
counter-terrorism researchers, analysts and government officials from throughout
Europe, the UK and the US. Countering Violent Extremist Narratives documented a
comprehensive approach to developing and disseminating counter-terror narratives

as a tool for challenging “modern terrorism” (NCTb 2010: 1).
As the introduction to this report notes,
The reasons for individuals to buy into and act upon a violent extremist narrative are subject
to much debate and little agreement. Suffice it to say that substantial resources are being
invested in order to tackle exploitable grievances and strengthen the resilience of vulnerable
groups, the latter of which involves deepening the acceptance of the pluriformity of ideas as
an essential element to democratic society. This form of prevention focuses on the vulner-
ability of possible receivers of the narrative and—in line with the comprehensive approach—
thus complements the repressive measures directed at the senders of the narrative. One way
to increase the resilience of potential receivers to the violent extremist message, given that
eradicating the availability of extremist narratives in the information age is unrealistic, is to
diminish the attractiveness of the narrative. This could be done, for example, by undermin-
ing the credibility of the sender, exposing contradictions in the narrative, or by promoting
alternatives by those best suited to do so. (NCTb 2010: 5)
This passage helps make visible some of the key assumptions underpinning
contemporary approaches to counter-narrative. Counter-terror narratives are explic-
itly aligned with the “soft power” (Nye 2004) paradigm of community-focused
counter-terror initiatives. “Soft power” strategies in countering violent extremism
focus on perceived individual and social vulnerabilities; legitimate some (but not
all) grievances as root factors in the resort to terror; emphasise prevention rather
than sanction; and seek to deliver alternatives and solutions through multiple channels,
including government and community spheres of influence.
Yet, notwithstanding their alignment with soft power, contemporary counter-
terror narrative strategies remain limited in key respects. Perhaps the most impor-
tant of these is that they tend to be uniformly trained on countering neo-jihadi
narratives as part of the “global counter-insurgency” against Salafi jihadism (de
Graaff 2010: 37), despite widespread acknowledgement of other modes of terrorist
narrative, including, for example, region-specific liberation movements and right-
wing extremism (NCTb 2010). The “Muslim/non-Muslim divide” was rapidly insti-
gated by pronouncements made early on in the Bush administration’s “war on
terror” following 9/11:
If [President Bush] was really declaring a full scale war on terror, his target list should have
included the ETA in Spain, the Hindu/Marxist Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the Maoist rebels
in eastern India, the Kurdish PKK and so on, which it obviously did not. The U.S.-led
GWOT [Global War on Terror] was aimed at a single special brand of terrorism, i.e. Islamist
or jihadist terrorism: not only al-Qaeda, but also the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas,
Hezbollah and similar terrorist organisations. Consequently, although many western leaders
[subsequently indicated] that the war on terror was neither a war against Islam, nor a cru-
sade […] many got the impression that the crucial post-9/11global divide was one between
Muslims and non-Muslims. (de Graaff 2010: 36)
Various contributors to Countering Violent Extremist Narratives go on to critique

this transnational narrative turn, often in sophisticated ways that highlight the
importance of distinguishing between varieties of Islamic history and scholarship
and both old and new varieties of jihadism, including those that explicitly endorse
terrorism and violence.
76 M. Grossman
Yet such a critique, while useful, is only part of the problem. As Michael Stohl
has astutely noted, “Terrorism remains communicatively constituted violence in
which how the audience reacts, and the political effects of the reactions, are the core
process of terrorism” (2008: 13). Beyond the need to widen convincingly the discur-
sive net of extremism to include non-neo-jihadi forms of terrorism, contemporary
counter-narratives against violent extremism are also failing to address other, criti-
cally important social and cultural narratives now besieging many modern democra-
cies—amongst them extremist nodes of xenophobia, racism and ethically evacuated
media reporting. These are successfully eroding cultural tolerance and genuine
democratic pluralism, and in the process paving the way for the kinds of social and
political alienation and disenchantment with contemporary democratic pluralism
that can contribute to support for extremism.
Moreover, contemporary counter-terror narratives need to avoid undermining
their own premises of democratic debate and an open field of ideas and expression
by remaining committed, as they still appear to be, to the rigid binarisms of “Islamic”
versus “Western” regimes of value and meaning. This makes even current approaches
to counter-terror narratives agonistic rather than atomistic in orientation, lapsing
into stultifying dualisms rather than attempting to fragment or implode narratives of
violent extremism within their own terms and logics.
5.2 The First Wave: Macro-narratives of “Myth” Versus

“History”, “Them” Versus “Us”
We can more fully understand the orientation and also limitations of contemporary
counter-narrative models by exploring two key waves in their development. The
first wave developed over the decade following September 11. In this period,
Western counter-narrative strategies designed to disrupt, mitigate and repel explana-
tory frameworks for and justifications of terrorism focused almost exclusively on
what the literature (for example Casebeer and Russell 2005; Lia 2008; Halverson
et al. 2011; al Raffie 2012) terms the “Al-Qaeda” or “Islamist extremist” narrative,
which may be characterised more expansively as a variety of neo-jihadist (Lentini
2009)1 narrative that sought to motivate, condition and reinforce the commitment of
potential and actual recruits to violent extremist platforms and action.
Overwhelmingly, the first wave of counter-narrative strategies was bound up with
trying to understand and undermine the religious and historical dimensions of
radical Salafi Islam, with correspondingly less focus on neo-jihadist narratives
that linked domestic social and political grievances, marginalisation and
1
Peter Lentini (2009: 1) defines “neo-jihadism” as “a distinct late twentieth-century and early
twenty-first-century form of ideological expression, subculture, and militancy that combines novel
understandings and interpretations of Islamic theology and jurisprudence, with other non-Islamic
forms of social organization and interaction”.
disenfranchisement with a religious call to arms in order to fuel pro-violence

sentiment against its perceived adversaries.
A prime example of the thinking behind these initial mainstream efforts to dis-
rupt and counter an older generation of extremist Islamic narratives appears in a
2005 article by Casebeer and Russell of the US Naval Postgraduate School; their
contribution was published while Osama bin Laden was still the public face of
Al-Qaeda and before the rise of AQAP (Al-Qaeda-Arabian Peninsula)’s internet-
savvy Inspire magazine in 2010. Strongly inflected by Michael Vlahos’s Terror’s
Mask: Insurgency Within Islam (2002), Casebeer and Russell argue that terrorism
has now become a naturalised rather than exotic feature of everyday public dis-
course, one consumed by the threat of radical Islamic and specifically Al-Qaeda
militancy. “Confronting the Al-Qaeda narrative”, they write, “must be a critical mis-
sion requirement of any strategy to […] come to terms with the phenomenon of
Islamism […] and to understand how radicalised groups use violence to achieve
[their] ends” (Casebeer and Russell 2005).
An essential part of this is a “comprehensive consideration of the stories terror-
ists tell” and the means by which the narrative reach and appeal of Islamic-inspired
terrorism is built and consolidated. The aims here are straightforward: to gain,
through counter-narrative, entry into what the authors call the “OODA-loop” of the
“adversary” (OODA is a combat term which stands for “observe, orient, decide,
act”). Adopting a curious combination of literary structuralism, Proppian folk typol-
ogy, Popperian critical rationalism and Aristotelian rhetoric, “Al-Qaeda” narratives
are analysed for the foundational tropes and structures identified by Vlahos
(2002: 8), who discerns four elements’ of “Islamic fundamentalist narrative”:
1. A heroic journey and a mythic figure
2. The rhythm of history captured as epic struggle and story
3. The commanded charge of renewal, and
4. History revealed and enjoined through mystic literary form
Viewed through the lens of postcolonial cultural inquiry, the problems posed by this
narrative scaffolding are numerous. Prominent amongst them is the mobilisation of
the pervasive imperialist trope in which “we” (the West, the white, the Judeo-
Christian) have “history” whereas “they” (the Oriental, the dark, the Islamic) have
merely “myth” and “story”. This trope is further expounded upon in Vlahos’s own
gloss on the religious and cultural antecedents of Al-Qaeda, despite his vigorous
critiques of neo-imperialism and the West:
The major message of Al Qaeda and the Taliban is essentially Ibn Taymiyyah’s message
brought forward seven centuries with all its passion intact. How could this be? We tend to
seek authority for our thought in something we call ‘modernity’. Modernity is understood
as ‘what is best is newest’, but underlying this postulation are existential foundations. These
tell us that knowledge is progressive and in a constant state of revision, so that our current
understanding of truth is what most closely approaches ‘absolute truth’. Thought within
Islam, in contrast, more closely resembles thought in Antiquity. A thousand years after its
codification, Greco-Roman civilization still focused on the interpretation of received truth.
Knowledge existed in a world where truth was already absolute; even though it might be
embellished, its main body was meant to be embraced and inhabited. (Vlahos 2002: 10)
78 M. Grossman
The emphasis on features of myth and epic definitively locates contemporary

Islamic neo-jihadism purposefully in the camp of the pre-modern, despite wide-
spread acceptance by both Muslim and other scholars of Al-Qaeda as a uniquely
modern phenomenon, drawing on modern intellectual sources of textual interpreta-
tion such as Qutb and Azzam2 and deploying decidedly constructivist approaches to
the formation and dissemination of its key tropes and narratives (Lynch 2006). As
Roxanne Euben (1999: 154) perceptively remarks, Qutb, for example, so influential
in the “phenomenon of Islamic resurgence” “is not a critic of modernity per se […]
but an opponent of post-Enlightenment rationalism. [His arguments] must be under-
stood as a […] dynamic critique rather than a scripturalist reflex” (1999: 155). Such
an argument thus forecloses analysis or understanding of the socio-cultural com-
plexities of these narratives and their purchase on modernity, a critically risky over-
sight that reveals the extent to which an investment in delegitimising the very
modern (even postmodern) political rhetoric of neo-jihadist insurgencies falls back
illogically on cultural and historical anachronism (Euben 1999).
These investments reveal the extent to which this first phase of counter-terror nar-
ratives merely replicated, rather than complicated, Samuel Huntington’s (1993, 1996)
notorious “clash of civilisations”. Indeed, Casebeer and Russell’s solution to combat-
ting the putative enchantments of Islamic fundamentalist “myth-making” is hardly
less pre-modern in its resort to the succour of Aristotelian narrative principles. While
conceding its “simplistic” nature, they nevertheless assert the value of Aristotelian
ethos, pathos and logos as a narrative counter-weight to the threat of terrorist induce-
ments from afar. Western culture’s Greco-Roman antecedents (for which Aristotle
serves as the metonym) are thus pitted against the elusive typology of Islamic funda-
mentalist myth-making, which can nevertheless be defeated if one only has the right
tools to crack Al-Qaeda’s culturally obscure codes. Their confidence that the terms of
classical Western culture can provide the required antidote to militant neo-jihadist
narratives typifies the early wave of anti-terror counter-narrative strategies and their
heavy reliance on “the paradigm of incommensurability and […] opposition between
‘modern secular knowledge’ and ‘Islamic knowledge’” (Euben 1999: 164).
In many respects, this paradigm is a variety of what Paul Gilroy calls the new “cul-
ture talk” of the post-9/11 environment. The new “culture talk” for Gilroy is really the
“old racism talk” dressed in politically correct clothes, a discourse that “smuggles in
the old xenophobics of race but relocates them outside the biogenetic and into the
discourse of ‘untranslatable customs’ and ‘incommensurate cultural differences”
(2004: 158). These “untranslatable and incommensurate differences”, which threaten
both by their nature and by their number, are then compressed into the same binarisms
by which Empire managed and repressed its Others. Such resurgent dualism was
identified in Britain in the late 1990s by Yunas Samad, who noted that the
[…] neoconservative combination of social authoritarianism and race, national identity and
patriotrism leads [neoconservatives] to redefine biological racism to one based on culture
and being British [The] new racism wanted to replace multiculturalism with a pluralism in
which separatism would prevent cultural contamination. (Samad 1998: 64)3
2
I am indebted to Joshua Roose for bringing this point to my attention.
3
Again, I am indebted to Joshua Roose for directing me to this source.
More broadly, this trend was well exemplified by early approaches to counter-
terror narrative strategy, which saw “two important story-sets: the ones our adver-
sary is telling, and the one being told implicitly and explicitly by us” (Casebeer and
Russell 2005). Rather than hollowing out the fundamentalist narrative from within
by using a variety of deconstructive or rhizomatic tactics (Deleuze and Guattari
2004), the first wave of counter-narratives mounted a Manichean assault on the
posited “structures” of neo-jihadi storytelling as a contest between a disarmingly
familiar (and therefore reassuring) rationalist Western telos in one corner and a
crafty, shape-shifting neo-Orientalist Islamic mythos in the other.
By underestimating the complex ways in which neo-jihadi narratives operate
transversally across both tradition and modernity, received knowledge and radical
or heterodox interpretation, the first wave of counter-terror narratives foundered,
particularly in the context of the flatter structures and hypertextually oriented nature
of the Internet and social media platforms, an observation tellingly brought out in
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam’s reframing of the contemporary “clash regime” by
which neo-orientalist discourses of Islam are sustained:
Today, the clash regime multiplies itself in the networked spaces of the Internet and travels
effortlessly along the ethers of a technologically globalised world. […] Any critique of the
clash regime must [therefore] account for culture and counter-culture, containment and
stabilisation, salience and flexibility, conservatism and upheaval, reification and change.
(2013: 267, 275)
Both counter-terror and also pro-terror narrative strategies have now shifted pre-
cisely toward more constructivist, less centralising models of design and delivery
(Lynch 2006). This has pleased those analysts who believe that such developments
have dealt a fatal blow to a centrally managed Al-Qaeda master narrative “brand”.
As Lisa Merriam put it when reflecting on the differential leadership influence of
Al-Qaeda’s Al-Awlaki versus bin Laden, “The lack of brand leadership, lack of a
celebrity brand face, splintering brand focus and fragmenting brand strategy are
some of the ‘thousand cuts’ that have felled the al-Qaeda brand” (Merriam 2011).
Yet Merriam here misses the critical importance of how various discourses of
extremism, and not just in the sphere of terror either, are striving to reinvent their
messages using the discourse and tactics of postmodern fragmentation for storytell-
ing and also for combat—as the appeal to and resourcing of home-grown “self-
starter” acts of terrorism makes clear. The dividing line between the solitary and the
solidary, as we are seeing in the reconfiguration of neo-jihadist movements such as
Boko Haram in Nigeria, for example, is becoming more blurred by the hour, and
this is symptomatic of the creatively and peculiarly postmodern energies (Euben
1999) that can underwrite varieties of contemporary terrorism today.
First-wave counter-terror narratives are thus now seen increasingly by many
intelligence experts as flawed because they reproduce an un-interrogated dualism
that deploys a retrofit, agonistic model (recalling Huntington) that either fails to
resonate with or actively antagonises key sectors of cosmopolitanised and densely
intercultural societies. As Michael Stohl has observed, the price for such radical
oversimplification in the early days of Al-Qaeda’s emergence was high:
80 M. Grossman
Rather than recognizing the multiple audiences for both bin Laden’s message through the
attacks and the need to address those multiple audiences in the development of a response,
the Bush administration responded with a message to what it conceived as its base. The
political expediency of equating terrorism with ‘evil’ and to focus on one particular evil
such as bin Laden is clear in the mobilization of political support of the home audience and
much of the international audience in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. The early
black—white imagery of good versus evil employed by George W. Bush generated imme-
diate elite and public support from that base in the initial stages of response. However,
ignoring the political conflicts that underlay the terrorism created fissures in that wider
audience over time. Refusing to consider how bin Laden’s message resonated with support-
ers, why wealthy Saudis as well as poor Pakistanis, Indonesians, Egyptians and recent
European immigrants responded to the message, lost valuable public support from the vast
majority of the populations of nations around the globe. (Stohl 2008: 13)
This view is by no means universally accepted amongst counter-terrorism strate-

gists, however. For example, some continue to advocate developing a sustained cli-
mate of community fear, rather than tolerance, as a potent weapon in countering
violent extremism. As one American counter-terrorism expert put it in a discussion
of metropolitan community policing, states should aim at “creating a shared sense of
threat in which society as a whole fears the same fears” to successfully combat local
extremism (Downing 2007 in Kosseim 2011: 10). This commitment to a shared fab-
ric of fear as a unifying attribute of otherwise diverse societies inevitably falls back
on strategies of cultural reductionism and outright xenophobia to sustain its narrative
power: since it must tell over and over a powerfully negative and hostile story about
an out-group to foster a tenuous in-group sense of solidarity, sanctuary and security.
This is of a piece with the broader agonistic mode of storytelling about multicultural-
ism and immigration that Gilroy sees as a classic case of the “Powellite folk analy-
sis” now streaming throughout Europe. In this discourse, the “strangers” both
without and within who occupy the badlands of xenophobic nationalism and cultural
puritanism are demonised to assuage the resurgent anxieties of societies for whom
the capacity to delimit and manage “difference” has starkly declined in recent years
as the normative experience of socio-cultural heterogeneity has intensified. As Gilroy
(2004: 137) argues,
Today’s new hatreds arise less from supposedly reliable anthropological knowledge of the
stable identity and predictable difference of the other [and more from] not being able to
locate the Other’s difference in the common-sense lexicon of alterity. Different people are
still hated and feared, but the timely antipathy against them is nothing compared to the
hatreds turned toward the greater menace of the half-different and partially familiar. To
have mixed is to have been party to a great civilizational betrayal. Any unsettling traces of
the resulting hybridity must therefore be excised from the tidy, bleached-out zones of
impossibly pure culture.
Thus the half-different and partially familiar—for example, second- or

third-generation British Muslim citizens—are, no less than more recently arrived
immigrants, routinely designated as either actual or potential “traitors, […] doomed
in perpetuity to be outsiders. Becoming an enemy terrorist only makes explicit what
was already implicit in their tragic and marginal position, irrespective of where they
are born” (Gilroy 2004: 134). In effect, such individuals and groups become what
Gilroy calls “denizens”, constructed as eternal fringe-dwellers regardless of their
citizenship status and length of tenure, whose claims to national belonging and
accountability are predicated upon and limited by evermore proscriptive diagnoses
of cultural particularity and exclusion. To be a denizen is to be mongrelised: mid-
way between the full rights and recognitions afforded to citizens and the absence of
those rights and recognitions in the case of so-called aliens. Denizens are halfway
between presence and absence, to be in a place, but never really of it, a third term
that ignites a sense of threat and discomfort wherever and whenever contemporary
binaries of national entitlement and community belonging are affirmed.
5.3 The Second Wave: From Macro-narrative

to Micro-narrative
It is this positioning of Muslim individuals and communities in diaspora, “citizens”

by law but “denizens” by decree in relation to concerns about violent extremism and
terrorism, which the second wave of counter-narrative thinking now addresses.
As touched on briefly earlier, an international consortium of counter-terrorism
experts convened by the Netherlands National Coordinator for Counterterrorism
organised a forum on “Counter-narratives and the performative power of counterter-
rorism” to explore new approaches to developing and disseminating counter-narra-
tive messages. The findings and conclusions of this expert group tell, for the most
part, a new story with an old and predictable conclusion.
In the second wave, contesting the structure and impact of jihadist narratives
(though no longer ascribed exclusively to Al-Qaeda) remains a key focus, and once
again, four layers of jihadi storytelling are identified: the political, the moral, the reli-
gious and the social-heroic. So far, so familiar. Yet there are changes too. One of these
is an emphasis on the primacy of the political rather than the religious dimensions of
neo-jihadi narrative, which concedes the failure of earlier approaches to sufficiently
acknowledge what Gilroy sees as the “links between the appeals of political Islam,
domestic racism and domestic social disenfranchisement and marginalisation” (2004:
154). There are signs too of a shift from the constricting dualisms of “us” versus
“them” and a stronger appreciation of the need for more nuanced narrative strategies,
multiple audiences, and the localised design and delivery of counter-narratives that
rebut jihadi suasion but also understand and engage with its frames and trajectories.
In essence, the key movement between counter-terror narratives Waves One and
Two is a shift from a single, centralised macro-counter-narrative to multiple,
pluralised micro-counter-narratives. This interest in the power of micro-counter-
narratives is driven by several factors. It is now widely acknowledged that govern-
ment-initiated counter-narratives are highly ineffective as a means of dissuading
those still thinking about whether or not to engage in violent extremism (NCTb
2010; Tahiri and Grossman 2013): they lack community credibility, are not nimble
in using or resourcing multiple communication channels and strategies, and their
messages cannot effectively be controlled across the multiple spheres in which
counter-narratives must circulate. In addition, social media and the Internet have
82 M. Grossman
completely transformed the rules of engagement with storytelling and audiences by

pro-violent and anti-violent extremist proponents alike.
Given these recalibrations in contemporary counter-narrative strategy, it is reason-
able to ask how the second moment envisages engaging Western Muslim communi-
ties to develop and mobilise effective counter-narratives from within their own
contexts and circumstances. Yet this is precisely where the limits of counter-narrative
thinking—and with them the limits of multiculturalism in counter-terrorism con-
texts more broadly—are revealed. “Impossible” as it is for governments to “aspire to
control and employ a central-counter-narrative”, this more recent approach now says
the effort to “promote multiple narratives” should be achieved through selecting
“various carefully chosen partners”, including the “stimulat[ion] of the Muslim
community to take ownership of certain areas of the issue” (NCTb 2010: 9).
This latter statement is troubling in its ambivalence and wariness toward making
common cause with Muslim communities in the struggle against violent extremism.
In this articulation, half-in and half-out, and definitely without an “access all areas”
pass, Muslims remain, as always, denizens in the realm of countering terrorism. For
example, why will “the Muslim community”—which this expert group would be
well aware certainly does not exist as a unified field—be encouraged to take car-
riage of “certain areas” in countering violent extremism but not others? What kind
of “ownership” of the “issue” of violent extremism will be “stimulated”, and how?
What are the freedoms and limits of such ownership, and how will the “Muslim
community” know which areas are theirs and which are off-limits?
The second wave of conceptualising counter-terror narrative is in its early stages,
and there are no answers as yet to these questions. The locution here however, ges-
tures implicitly towards the well-worn structures of imperial control in the colonies,
in which “native” administrators and local rulers—without whom the colonisers
came to realise they could not function—were offered very limited forms of local
power that would extend but never threaten the dominion of the distant metropolitan
centre. Indigenous colonial administrators and leaders were also denizens under
imperial rule, in their place but no longer of it, flickering only erratically across the
retina of empire’s gaze when their utility flared into momentary focus. In this sense,
to paraphrase Gilroy, the “new pluralism talk” of counter-narrative strategies Wave
Two sounds suspiciously like the “old Islamophobic talk” of counter-narrative
strategies Wave One in its refusal to acknowledge that the “issue” of countering
terrorism is already and everywhere “owned” by the vast majority of Muslims who
deplore terrorism and who are amongst its most visible victims in the vicissitudes of
daily lived experience via the cultural and political aftermaths of 9/11.
5.4 Counter-Narratives and Conviviality
A further question is why counter-narrative strategies continue to invest so heavily

in countering jihadi narratives to the exclusion of other, more domestically inflected
and damaging discourses that it would profit democracies concerned about
home-grown terrorism to attend to. The most pervasive and corrosive of these
narratives is that of globalised commercial media, which continues merrily to foster
a perceived link between Islam and terrorism in popular consciousness (see also
Chap. 6). Where is the state-sanctioned counter-narrative to that? In his fascinating
Terrorism: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Joseba Zulaika argues that the discourse of
terrorism “must be disenchanted if it is to lose its efficacy for all concerned”
(2005: 1). The recognition here of narrative’s power to enchant and seduce is well-
founded. Yet, as noted above, widespread disenchantment is already present in other
quarters for many in the community, who profoundly distrust mainstream media
and the stories it tells, or fails to tell.
This has impelled the re-narrativisation of key moments in the recent history and
discourse of terror, including 9/11. These alternative narratives, rather than contest-
ing or countering dominant narratives of terrorism’s causes and impacts, work either
by radically reframing the interpretation of such events, or by simply storying them
out of existence altogether. For example, in line with the myriad of internet-based
conspiracy sites and social resistance movements devoted to 9/11 sometimes known
as “9/11 truthers”, a number of the 537 respondents in our recent national study
exploring Australian perspectives on radicalisation and extremism, Community and
Radicalisation (Tahiri and Grossman 2013) saw 9/11 as a complete fiction or inven-
tion, “photoshopped” into existence by a global media conspiracy in thrall to
Western governments bent on bringing global Islam to its knees. While some of our
study participants believed that these attacks took place but felt that subsequent
discourses on 9/11 were a media “beat-up”, others questioned whether the attacks
were completely invented and then peddled by media organisations around the
world. For this group of participants, conspiracy theory around the events of 9/11 in
particular was a strong narrative driver, with many citing “conspiracy”, “conspiracy
theory” and “government trickery” as the main rationale for the perceived link
between Islam and terrorism:
September 11 was fake, if it was real they would have blown up the White House, think
about it, it doesn’t make sense to blow up the Twin Towers and kill innocent people. (Focus
group participant)
They already have that perception about Muslims, it could have been anyone. We never
knew who did September 11, probably done by George Bush. (Focus group participant)
How can we be so sure that they actually did it, still a lot of confusion about 9/11—I’ve
seen documentaries made by locals, by non-Muslims. (Focus group participant)
Moreover, a number of participants reframed news stories of terrorist aspirants in

African or Middle Eastern training camps as a tale not of social, political or reli-
gious heroes or combatants—the territory of classic neo-jihadi narratives—but as
victims of kidnapping, brainwashing and drug-assisted coercion who were therefore
not responsible for their actions or their beliefs:
I have heard that they drug them before they do that, a bit of drug before the act, they numb
them, and they are usually young, and don’t know better, [at an] early age they are kid-
napped. (Focus group participant)
It’s like if you tell a twelve-year-old that it is good to die for your religion, it is good to
die for your religion, it is good to die for your religion—[then] if you ask him if he would
kill people, he will say yes. (Focus group participant)
84 M. Grossman
They have interviewed failed suicide bombers, those that sent them are the strong decisive
ones, and the bombers are patsies, coerced, bullied, and when they’ve failed and come
back—a lot of them were brainwashed, actually. (Focus group participant)
For others, however, the concept of “brainwashing” was more aligned with being
misled through ignorance, lack of education, choosing the wrong path or being
influenced by the wrong people or environment:
They are being inculcated to believe these things. They are looking for answers to questions
and if these people who try to brainwash them give them answers to their questions, they
will believe them. (Focus group participant)
These contributions reference broader, critical alternative narratives from within

a Western modern, not anti-modern, frame of reference, and they exert influences
and meanings that counter-terror narrative efforts ignore to their cost.
5.5 The Third Wave? Contesting the “Negative Case”

of Counter- Extremist Narratives
A major theme emerging from our study in relation to what kinds of counter-
narratives work best was a question as to whether counter-narratives are desirable at
all, or whether fresh alternatives are required. A significant proportion of community
leaders, government stakeholders and focus group participants suggested that the
time may have come to replace or supplement traditional approaches to counter-
narratives, which many respondents saw as potentially or actively divisive through
their emphasis on the “negative case” narrative, with more affirmative, positive nar-
ratives focusing on the positives of what unites Australians from many different
cultures and backgrounds. They also believed that assertive narratives of national
identity and unity would help limit the success of extremists in setting an agenda
against which traditional counter-narratives are inevitably perceived as reactive
rather than proactive:
Radicalised Islam is a social movement, a banner, it connects them to a big picture. To
combat that social movement, you have to replace it with another, a big banner of a call to
cooperation that others can see as a way of building a better way/world. (Focus group
participant)
Governments should produce not a counter-narrative but an assertive narrative of who
we are as a society and what we stand for and need to protect. (Government stakeholder)
I went to the ECCV4 state conference, and a guy from Italian background was talking
about Islamophobia and saying it’s unacceptable, we have to combat it, and that’s the first
time I’ve heard a non-Muslim do that, and it makes you feel better—it made me feel, wow,
somebody cares. We need to hear more positive voices. (Focus group participant)
We are looking for unity in the wrong places—not our skin colour or our accents, but
the fact that we are Australian—national identity is the only thing that unites us as
Australian. Otherwise we are all too different. We need [narratives that recognise] the fact
that living together here peacefully is really what binds us. (Community youth leader, new
arrival background)
4
Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria. Victoria is an Australian state and home to the nation’s
second largest capital city of Melbourne.
In a similar vein, many community-based participants felt that such narratives

need to concentrate on bridging or eliminating the “us and them” mentality that
current Australian discourses on culture, identity and belonging, particularly on the
political and media fronts, are thought to have helped shape:
What they need is a lot of the reputable [Muslim community] leaders to do a lot of the talk-
ing—this would break down the ‘us and them’ mentality and show it is just about ‘us’.
(Community leader)
Imam [name]—he does a great job, I’ve attended his events, and he doesn’t talk about
non-Muslims and us, he talks about mercy and humanity, he feeds the hungry no matter
who they are, they donate blankets to churches for the homeless. (Focus group participant)
A large proportion of community-based participants, including many who

were Muslim-Australians, thought the main challenges in developing strong
counter-narratives to violent extremism that specifically addressed neo-jihadism
were related to the quality, orientation and public profile of Islamic religious and
community leaders in Australia and overseas. They wanted to see stronger rela-
tionships between moderate Muslims and youth, better representation of moder-
ate Islamic views in public forums, and more effective measures to limit the
influence those leaders whom they saw as inciting division and extremism within
communities:
Those young people don’t emerge in a vacuum, they are supported by others, those who are
teaching them, so stop the teachers, change the environment. […] The policy lesson here is
provide or establish youth centres for Muslims and let them socialise with imams who do
not have these views and can develop trust and relationships in different settings and get
different views. (Focus group participants)
However, there was also a fairly strong view amongst some participants that
counter-narratives were a responsibility for Australian communities in general and
should not be produced by or aimed at Muslim communities alone:
On occasions when people say things that are racist or anti-Islam, there are people who will
stand up against Islamophobia. When you get that support, you are more likely to care
about the people and your country, and we need more proper and moderate leaders to come
into the spotlight. (Focus group participant)
It should not only be the Muslim community doing this. It should be each and every
human being. Extremism doesn’t derive only from Islam—it can derive from one person to
another, one religion to another, one culture to another. These counter-narratives should be
by everyone for everyone. (Community leader)
There was also support, particularly from government-based participants, for

ensuring that counter-narratives are designed for emotional rather than purely logi-
cal impact and are highly tailored to localised, even intimate social contexts. They
felt that aiming counter-narratives at families, friends and communities that bear the
brunt of anti-extremist interventions would be helpful, rather than concentrating on
out-dated and abstract “master-narratives” of countering extremism:
Also the consequences need to be quite personal—some people have said to us that if such
a [terrorist] act occurred here, the biggest victims would be Australian Muslims themselves
in terms of harassment, victimisation and targeting long after the actual event was over.
(Government stakeholder)
86 M. Grossman
I’m quite keen on the idea that mothers have the capacity to influence in an early stage – the
multicultural mothers can put a lot of guilt on the kids. The mothers have the capacity to
engage emotionally with socially distanced young people. Bringing it back to the effect on
their immediate family can be powerful. (Government stakeholder)
5.6 Counter-Narrative Futures
Where, then, should counter-narratives go? A very recent report by the Qatar-based
Soufan Group (QIASS 2013) on new thinking in countering violent extremist narra-
tives replicates our own findings and also some of those of the Netherlands report in
a number of key respects. This includes the Soufan Group’s emphasis on decentral-
ised micro-narratives that understand differences within as well as between
communities and audiences; stronger and more creative use of social media and
Internet platforms; more emphatic use of grassroots community leaders and influ-
encers to design and deliver counter-narrative messaging; and, critically, a focus on
strengthening skills in critical thinking and analysis that can disrupt the distortions
of extremist interpretations of Islam in particular. Yet the Soufan Group’s analysis
parts company with the Netherlands’ discussion of 2010 in its emphasis, without
qualifications, on joint community-government initiatives in the counter-narrative
arena. “Ownership of CVE programs is important”, they write (QIASS 2013: 16),
pointing to a successful program in Minneapolis/St Paul in the US between com-
munity organisations and local authorities, supplemented by support from the
Department of Homeland Security, to drive counter-narrative initiatives at the local
level and build trust with relevant communities. That this ownership is conceived of
as fully shared, rather than restricted or qualified with respect to Muslim community
involvement, highlights the shift from the ambivalence of the Netherlands report to
the resolute rhetoric of inclusion moving forward.
This, then, is the third wave of counter-narrative futures: partnerships between
communities and governments that do not make Muslim citizens into “denizens”,
but instead work to build cooperation, trust and a common sense of purpose, which
is in many ways an affirmative narrative of its own. There is always a slight risk that
affirmative narratives can descend into uncritical modes of vacuous nationalist sen-
timent and anti-diversity grandstanding. However, a counter-narrative strategy that
uses contemporary energies around multiple micro-narratives to find and work with
the commonalities and overlaps that animate Gilroy’s notion of ‘convivial culture’
might offer better and more enduring prospects. Conviviality, argues Gilroy
(2006: 40),
Is a social pattern in which different metropolitan groups dwell in close proximity, but
where their racial, linguistic and religious particularities do not—as the logic of ethnic
absolutism suggests they must—add up to discontinuities of experience or insuperable
problems of communication. […] There are [a range of] commonalities […] that intercut
the dimensions of difference and complicate the desire to possess or manage the cultural
habits of others as a function of one’s own relationship with identity. Conviviality
acknowledges this complexity and, though it cannot banish conflict, can be shown to have
equipped people with means of managing it in their own interests and in the interests of
others with whom they can be induced heteropathically to identify.
Gilroy’s concept of heteropathic identification holds out the most promise for
where counter-narrative thinking can best train its energies for the future. Rather
than conceding either to the liberalist tendency to sweep cultural, religious and
social differences under the carpet of national unification around precepts of democ-
racy, freedom or civic engagement, or the reactionary tendency to harden the battle
lines of identification with one group or race or culture at the expense of others,
counter-terrorism’s multiple micro-narratives can be used to support the small,
uncertain, cumulative steps that are the only sure way to influence heteropathic
sociality from below—which is where it must occur to have any real impact. There
is much evidence of this happening already in communities across Australia, some
of it documented in our study (Tahiri and Grossman 2013). But the efforts to
resource and harness this, to nurture and mobilise and grow it, are still at the stage
of crawling rather than walking.
The ethics of Gilroy’s conviviality lie in its willingness to engage with not only
the structural but also the perceptual terrain of cultural difference, neither fearfully
suppressing nor uncritically celebrating multicultures, but instead examining, living
with and working through difference on many levels in the service of finding those
commonalities and overlaps that can create usable crossings rather than unbridge-
able chasms. As Gilroy observes, “exposure to otherness can involve more than
jeopardy” (2006: 40). This is a lesson not yet fully learnt by current counter-narrative
thinking, but it holds the most promise for a new kind of “OODA-loop” (Casebeer
and Russell 2005), in which observations of and orientations toward difference and
multiculturalism can produce new kinds of decisions and actions that will eliminate
the negative dialectic of difference by which both contemporary pro-violent and
anti-violent extremist narratives are currently characterised. This is a lesson well
heeded as we prepare for new challenges and new stories in countering the com-
plexities of violent extremism across the globe.
Acknowledgements I am grateful to Dr Joshua Roose at the Institute for Religion and Critical
Inquiry, Australian Catholic University, for commenting on an earlier draft of this article.
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Chapter 6
Between Rhetoric and Reality:
Shari’a and the Shift Towards Neoliberal
Multiculturalism in Australia
Joshua M. Roose and Adam Possamai
Abstract This chapter explores the schism in Australian multiculturalism between

explicit and publically-stated rejection of Islamic law as it relates to the personal
domain on the one hand, and the embracing and promotion of Islamic finance as
opening an avenue to prosperity on the other. We argue that this schism aligns
closely with the functioning of neoliberal multiculturalism; where the cultural
dimension of ethnicity, or in this case, faith, is only so valuable in the political arena
as the tangible economic benefits it can offer. The chapter therefore seeks to explore
the key concept of neoliberal multiculturalism as a way of better understanding
contemporary Australian multicultural policies.
Keywords Australian multiculturalism • Legal pluralism • Multiculturalism •

Neoliberal multiculturalism • Shari’a law
6.1 Introduction
Multiculturalism in Australia has faced considerable challenges over the past

decade. Some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that the policy is “in retreat”.
Others however argue that Australia maintains the world’s best multicultural poli-
cies and that multiculturalism is engrained in Australia’s social fabric. A great deal
of the focus upon multiculturalism has related to the existence of a highly diverse
and rapidly growing Muslim community (also the subject of Chaps. 4 and 5), that
from 2001 to 2011 almost doubled in size (ABS 2001–2011 in Peucker et al. 2014).
One issue in particular that has cut to the heart of the debate about Muslims in
Australia has been the issue of legal pluralism, and whether Shari’a, Islamic law,
J.M. Roose (*)

Faculty of Arts and Education, Australian Catholic University, Banyo, Australia
e-mail: Joshua.Roose@acu.edu.au
A. Possamai
Religion and Society Research Centre, University of Western Sydney, Parramatta, Australia
e-mail: a.possamai@uws.edu.au

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16003-0_6
92 J.M. Roose and A. Possamai
should be in anyway formally recognised within the secular system. Turner (2011:
174) argues that “the possibility of legal pluralism is an important test of the limita-
tions of multiculturalism or at least public support for multicultural policies”.
Kymlicka (2005) similarly argues “the Sharia tribunal issue has become a lightning
rod precisely because it is a symbol of these larger unresolved questions about Islam
and liberal multiculturalism”. The answer from Australian politicians, the public
and most Muslims has been a resounding no. Yet key components of Shari’a, in
particular related to Islamic finance have been publically celebrated, pushed and
even defended by non-Muslim Australian politicians and bureaucrats. Islamic
finance is seen not only as “good” for the country (Black and Sadiq 2011), but as a
key plank of Australia’s multicultural platform.
This chapter will focus on and explore the schism in Australian multiculturalism
between explicit and publically stated rejection of Islamic law as it relates to the
personal domain on the one hand, and the embracing and promotion of Islamic
finance as opening an avenue to prosperity on the other. The chapter will grapple
with the dimensions of contemporary Australian multiculturalism, seeking to deter-
mine whether the concept of a “retreat from multiculturalism” has any currency. Are
Australian multicultural policies as expansive and positive as suggested by Banting
and Kymlicka (2013)? Or are they cynically exploitative of difference as a market
based mechanism of distinction? What are the potential implications of Australian
multicultural policies for the development of mutual recognition and respect
between Muslims and non-Muslims in the wider Australian community? While per-
haps not answering these questions in full, the chapter seeks to explore the key
concept of neoliberal multiculturalism as a way of better understanding contempo-
rary Australian multicultural policies. Blindly waving the flag of Australian multi-
culturalism in the face of dynamic new challenges without self-reflexivity has the
potential to cause ongoing damage to those it claims to benefit, including minority
communities.
6.2 Bipartisan Support for Australian Multiculturalism
At the level of political rhetoric, Australia might be considered to enjoy an unparal-

leled bipartisan support for multiculturalism, with leaders of Australia’s major
political parties publically stating their commitment to the policy. Speaking in the
lead up to the 2013 Federal Election (and before his newly elected government sub-
sequently sought to repeal elements of the Racial Discrimination Act), right-wing
conservative Tony Abbott stated at a Ramadan function that multicultural Australia
was a “beacon of hope to a divided world” and signalling a strongly integrationist
approach warned that “I am the sworn enemy for anyone who seeks to divide
Australian over Australian on issues of class, gender, birth place, race and particu-
larly over faith” (Abbott 2013). In a 2011 speech launching the then-Labor govern-
ment’s new multicultural policy titled “The Genius of Australian Multiculturalism”
the Immigration Minister at the time, Chris Bowen, argued that “without doubt
6 Between Rhetoric and Reality: Shari’a and the Shift Towards Neoliberal… 93
[multiculturalism] has strengthened Australian society”. He sought to distinguish a

unique Australian approach based on respect for Australian values, a citizenship-
centred approach, the economic benefits of multiculturalism and an emphasis on
social inclusion:
Multiculturalism is about inviting every individual member of society to be everything they
can be, and supporting each new arrival in overcoming whatever obstacles they face as they
adjust to a new country and society and allowing them to flourish as individuals. It is a mat-
ter of liberalism. A truly liberal society is a multicultural society. (Bowen 2011)
The Australian government multicultural policy developed by the Labor govern-

ment and as yet unchanged by the Liberal government is titled The People of
Australia: Australia’s Multicultural Policy and outlines the Australian approach.
Early on it states:
The Australian Government is unwavering in its commitment to a multicultural Australia
[…]. Multiculturalism is in Australia’s national interest and speaks to fairness and inclusion.
It embraces respect and support for cultural, religious and linguistic diversity. (DIMA 2011)
The policy outlines four key principles that shaped the then Labor Government
approach. These are based on celebrating diversity within the bounds of national
unity (1), commitment to a just and inclusive society with government services
responsive to the needs of all Australians (2), welcoming of the trade and invest-
ment benefits of multiculturalism (3) and promotion of tolerance and acceptance
and protection against discrimination (4) (see Chaps. 12 and 13 for more context
and analysis of Australian multiculturalism).
Despite the Government’s public pronouncements claiming its success, scholars
over the past decade have consistently noted a “pattern of retreat” in Australian
multiculturalism (Joppke 2004, 2014; Turner 2006; Jakubowicz 2006; Poynting and
Mason 2008; Fozdar 2011; Colic-Peskar 2011). Poynting and Mason (2008) argue
that the underlying foundations of Australian multiculturalism have shifted from
being based on “consent”, often purchased with state resourcing for immigrant
community needs, to one based on a “new integrationism” in which integration
becomes a demand imposed on migrant communities by the state:
The pursuit of the ‘War on Terror’ since 9/11 has increasingly seen the intrusion of the state
into cultural, and especially religious, matters of minority populations, overwhelmingly
amongst Muslims, in Australia. Pronouncements are now routinely made by political lead-
ers of what is acceptable in a sermon, for example, and what is ‘extreme’, ‘radical’ or unac-
ceptable. Religious leaders themselves have been identified by state actors as exemplary or
beyond the pale and to be replaced. (2008: 232)
In contrast to this, recent research by Banting and Kymlicka (2013: 8) utilised a

“multicultural policy (MCP) index” to test the strength of multicultural policies
viewed by both proponents and critics alike as “emblematic of multiculturalist
turn”. Eight indicators used to build the MCP index for immigrant communities
included constitutional, legislative or parliamentary affirmation of multiculturalism,
the adoption of multiculturalism in the school curriculum, the inclusion of ethnic
representation/sensitivity in public media, exemptions from dress codes, allowance
of dual citizenship, funding of ethnic organisations and bilingual education and
affirmative action for disadvantaged groups. On these measures, tested for in 1980,
2000 and 2010, Australia scored the highest of 21 OECD nations with a score of
8 in 2010. This remained equal to the 2000 score and built on 1980 (5) (Banting and
Kymlicka 2013: 25). By this MCP index, Australia has the strongest multicultural
policies in the Western world and has maintained these over the past decade.
6.3 Shari’a and Legal Pluralism in Australia: Political

Discourse
The debate about Shari’a and legal pluralism in Australia, as in other Western
nations including Canada, the UK and the US, is a relatively recent phenomenon.
It is clear that Western secular nations are facing a variety of challenges in coming
to terms with the presence of large and growing Muslims populations seeking to
live with reference to the principles of their faith. Levey (2010: 145) considers that
these challenges have emerged because Muslims were not party to the original
compacts between church and state that defined a secular society, while Turner
(2012: 1059) argues:
The specific issues surrounding Muslim minorities in non-Muslim secular states can be
seen as simply one instance of the more general issue of state and religion and modern
liberal societies. In this context, there is an increasing awareness of the limitations of the
Westphalian constitutional solution, the Hobbesian social contract and Lockean liberalism
as political strategies to manage conflicting religious traditions.
It is in this international political context that Australia is situated in relation to

Shari’a and legal pluralism and is shaping its response. The issue of Shari’a first
arose in the context of debate about Muslims adherence to “Australian values” and
loyalty driven by the conservative government of John Howard (1996–2007) (see
Chap. 10 on multicultural governance during the Howard era). In a speech to leaders
of Australian Islamic schools the former Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson
stated that those who don’t want to live by Australian values “can basically clear off”
(in Hawley 2005). Echoes of similarly phrased public sentiment were a trademark
feature of Howard government ministers throughout this period. Speaking in a 2006
speech to right wing think tank, the Sydney Institute, then-Australian Treasurer Peter
Costello (2006) criticized a “mushy misguided multiculturalism” and stated:
There are countries that apply religious or Shari’a law Saudi Arabia and Iran come to mind.
If a person wants to live under Shari’a law these are countries where they might feel at ease.
But not Australia.
And the citizenship pledge should be a big flashing warning sign to those who want to
live under Shari’a law. A person who does not acknowledge the supremacy of civil law laid
down by democratic processes cannot truthfully take the pledge of allegiance. As such they
do not meet the pre-condition for citizenship.
The Labor Government that took office in 2007 under Prime Minister Kevin
Rudd sought to avoid the politicisation of Muslim community politics that occurred
under the previous government (Roose 2010). In October 2009 however, a minor
controversy erupted when the honorary legal advisor to the Australian National
Imams Council (ANIC), Hyder Gulam, called for recognition of Shari’a in a similar
vein to Aboriginal customary law. Although supported at the grassroots by some in
the community legal sector in Melbourne, this prompted a response from the
Attorney-General Robert McClelland that “the Rudd Government is not consider-
ing and will not consider the introduction of any part of Shari’a into the Australian
legal system” (in Zwartz 2009). The legal profession appeared to move on irrespective
of this proclamation when in May 2010 the firm at which Gulam worked appointed
Sheikh Mohamadu Nawas Saleem Australia’s first “Shari’a consultant” (Lawyers
Weekly 2009).
The bipartisan rejection of legal pluralism was evident when Speaking in May
2010, prior to his election as Australian Prime Minister (from September 2013),
Tony Abbott stated in a radio interview:
No, there’s no way that we should have Shari’a law here, just as if I may say so, I think there
is limited place for any traditional aboriginal law in our system of justice. You’ve got to
have one system of justice for everyone […].
These events—relatively minor in light of the controversies to come—reveal a

resolute refusal to engage with the issue of Shari’a and legal pluralism by successive
Australian Governments on both sides of the political spectrum.
6.4 The AFIC Controversy
In April 2011 the Australian Government called for submissions from the public,
community groups and representative organisations to contribute to the formulation
of Australia’s multicultural policy. In response to this, the President of the Australian
Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC), Ikebal Patel (2011), wrote a submission to
the inquiry titled Embracing Muslim Values and Maintaining the Right to be Different.
In the submission Patel (2011) attempted to address the critique of legal plural-
ism with reference to the work of both modern Muslim and Western non-Muslim
scholars by arguing for the notion of “twin tolerations” proposed by Alfred Stepan
(2000). These are “the minimum degree of toleration democracy needs from reli-
gion and the minimum degree of toleration that religion needs from the state for the
polity to be democratic” (2011: 8). Patel argued further:
Muslims in Australia should accept the Australian values, and Australia should also provide
a ‘public sphere’ for Muslims to practice their belief. It takes two to tango. This approach
demands a compromise from Islam, which should be open to other values, and also to make
a similar demand of Australia. It is not only Australian Muslims who should reconcile these
identities, but also all Australians. (2011: 8)
Just over a month later when the submission was made public along with many
others it was this submission that made national headlines and prompted an
immediate reproach from the Attorney-General. With no allusion to further dialogue

Robert McClelland (in Karvelas 2011) stated:
As out citizenship pledge makes clear, coming to Australia means obeying Australian laws
and upholding Australian values. Australia’s brand of multiculturalism promotes integration.
If there is any inconsistency between cultural values and the rule of law the Australian law
wins out.
He would state further to this that there is “no place for Shari’a law in Australian
society” (in Hole 2012). The level of political hostility to the AFIC submission
forced Patel to immediately back away from his remarks and to reiterate the loyalty
of Australian Muslims. In an interview shortly after, Patel would state his support
for secularism, recognising Australia as a predominantly Christian country, claim-
ing further:
I am a very strong believer in the separation of religion and state and at the same time I am
a very strong believer in civil law—the Australian legal system—taking precedence […]. I
would have changed some words in retrospect, and the use of the word ‘Shari’a’ would have
been taken out. (in Merritt 2011)
Less than a year later (and 4 days before the joint migration committee senate
hearing on “the Inquiry into Multiculturalism in Australia”) the new Attorney-
General Nicola Roxon would reiterate McClelland’s earlier perspectives about
Shari’a almost verbatim. In referring to an inheritance case involving a Muslim
family before the courts of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Roxon (in
Karvelas 2012a) would state: “There is no place for Shari’a law in Australian soci-
ety and the Government strongly rejects any proposal for its introduction, including
in relation to wills and succession”. Once again the Attorney-General made refer-
ence to the citizenship pledge (Karvelas 2012a), highlighting the belief that calls for
Shari’a originate external to the nation. Speaking in 2012 the current Attorney-
General George Brandis (in Karvelas 2012b) stated the primacy of Australian law:
The Coalition does not believe that sharia law should be accepted or recognised in Australia.
It is logically possible for somebody to do something that is both consistent with Australian
law and consistent with sharia principles. The question is: are they obedient to
Australian law?
The recent history of Attorney-General statements on Shari’a from both sides of

the political divide strongly suggest that irrespective of the appearance of dialogue
through public inquiries, that the outcome in relation to Shari’a and legal pluralism
was a foregone conclusion—it would not even be contemplated or engaged with on
political grounds.
It is clear that at the level of national political discourse that government from
both sides of politics have utilised political rhetoric about Australian values as a
blunt instrument to reject Shari’a and legal pluralism. The more eloquent and
sophisticated voices of former high ranking members of the judiciary, including
former New South Wales Chief Justice Jim Spigelman (Merritt 2012) and former
Australian High Court Chief Justice the Honourable Sir Gerald Brennan (2012),
have similarly dismissed Shari’a publicly, claiming that no basis exists for its formal
recognition and integration (on the role legal discourses in the extension of religious
intolerance see, also, Chap. 3). Any attempt at dialogue (irrespective of its anecdotal
level of community support or opposition) has been immediately shut down by

the government, with those proposing it castigated in the media and reminded of the
conditional nature of their citizenship. Public debate is shut down, in a distinct con-
trast to the Habermasian notion of engagement between religious and non-religious
groups in the public sphere (Hussain and Possamai 2013).
6.5 Sharia in Everyday Life: The Reality
Opposition to Shari’a and legal pluralism in Australia has been driven by the
perception that accommodation poses a threat to Australian values, democracy and
the secular nature of the legal system. National level political discourse is yet to
move beyond a desultory good (us) versus bad (them) binary in which Shari’a must
be rejected on the grounds of its argued incompatibility with Australian law.
Parashar (2012: 576) argues that this debate has been carried out in an information
vacuum about the actual practice of Shari’a and legal pluralism in Australia. While
Black notes that there is a considerable variety of views across Australia’s diverse
Muslim communities, with the level of support for legal pluralism not known:
What is advocated seems to range from ‘everything’ to certain discrete aspects, notably
family and inheritance, banking, finance and commerce, to ‘nothing’. Views are diverse and
sometimes divisive amongst Muslims just as amongst non-Muslims. (2012: 74)
The debate about Shari’a homogenises what is in effect an incredibly diverse,

nuanced concept. A key authority on the Shari’a, Wael Hallaq argues that this is a
point lost in contemporary debates:
Our language fails us in our endeavour to produce a representation of that history [of
Islamic law] which not only spoke different languages (none of them English, not even in
British India), but also articulated itself conceptually, socially, institutionally and culturally
in manners and ways vastly different from those material and non-material cultures that
produced modernity and its Western linguistic traditions’. (2009: 1)
In seeking to move beyond national political discourse about Shari’a it is important

to understand the holistic nature of the concept and its role in the everyday life of
Muslims and to build a base of knowledge about its practice at the everyday level.
Shari’a is defined literally as “the path to the watering place” (Kamali 2008: 2), a
metaphor in the desert culture of early Islam for achieving salvation. Abdullah
Saeed (2006: 43) notes:
Shari’a represents the divine guidance contained in the revelation communicated to the
Prophet in his sayings and deed (Sunna). In the context of Islamic law, Shari’a refers to the
totality of this guidance contained in the Qur’an and Sunna and generally expressed in their
commands and prohibitions.
Hallaq states importantly, that the Shari’a does not distinguish between law and
morality (2009: 2), that they are in effect, one and the same. The practice of Islam
and the Shari’a are hence inextricable from one another, bound together as they are
in a moral code, and feature in the everyday life of Muslims, guiding familial and
wider social relationships irrespective of the prevailing secular law. Prominent
Iranian scholar Hossein Nasr explores the holistic dimension of the Shari’a and
Islam stating that:
Religion to a Muslim is essentially the Divine Law which includes not only universal moral
principles but details of how a man should conduct his life and deal with his neighbour and
with God; how he should eat, procreate and sleep; how he should see at the market-place;
how he should pray and perform other acts of worship […]. (1966: 95–6)
This extends to financial and business dealings, which should be undertaken

ethically in line with principles spelt out in the Quran and Hadiths (practices of the
Prophet). Given the all-encompassing nature of Islam and the Shari’a, it should
come as no surprise, as Turner argues that “the sociological fact is that Shari’a is
already operating in modern secular societies” (2011: 174).
Adherence to religious law is not unique to observant Muslims. Saeed (2008:
162) notes that religious laws can be found in all three of the monotheistic religions
that trace their roots to Abraham: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. However, in
Western contexts, he argues, “Muslim law is pushed into the realm of the unofficial,
the extra-legal, the space of cultural practice or ethnic minority custom rather than
as officially recognized law” (2006: 58). More recently Ann Black (2010: 65) has
argued that Shari’a is the:
[…] dominant normative force in the lives of many Muslim Australians, however its opera-
tion and regulation is essentially underground. It is not subject to scrutiny by anyone other
than its participants, nor is it subject to the protection of Australian laws and processes.
A failure to engage with shari’a as a powerful social factor shaping the lives of
Australian Muslims may be politically convenient, yet constitutes a negative
approach to governance.
6.6 Shari’a and Financial Opportunity: A Powerful Contrast
There exists a stark contrast between the political discourse surround Shari’a and
legal pluralism and Shari’a-compliant Islamic finance in the Australian context.
This was first noted by Black and Sadiq in 2011 when they argued:
It seems that Islamic banking and finance laws are ‘good’ Shari’a worthy of adoption,
whilst personal status laws (marriage, divorce, separation, custody of children and inheri-
tance) are not. (2011: 388)
Media analysis by Possamai et al. (2013) found that this was reflected in the
Australian media over 4 years from 2008 to 2012, with financial Shari’a viewed in
a very favourable light and the legal dimensions of Shair’a, in particular Hadud
punishments represented extremely negatively.
At the level of national political discourse, it is worth noting that just months
after the Attorney General’s October 2009 statement that the Rudd Government
would not consider the introduction of any part of Shari’a into the Australian legal
system, the Australian Federal Agency, Austrade, released a detailed document
titled “Islamic Finance” (Australian Trade Commission 2010). This document

states in its introduction:
Islamic finance is one of the fastest growing segments of the global financial services industry.
Shari’a-compliant financial assets have been growing at over 10 per cent per annum over
the past 10 years. Measured by Shariah-compliant assets of financial institutions, the global
Islamic finance industry is estimated at US$822 billion in 2009.
The document not only outlines specific opportunities for Islamic finance to
become an “important element” in Australia’s aspirations to be a global financial
centre, it actively markets the size of Australia’s Muslim population (it “exceeds the
combined Muslim population of Hong Kong and Japan” and engages in great depth
with various components of Shari’a compliant finance including Muraabaha (an
alternative to interest), Ijara “similar to hire-purchase” and Sukuk “Shari’a compli-
ant financial certificates of investment” (Australian Trade Commission 2010: 5–8).
In May 2010 the Assistant Treasurer Nick Sherry (2010) launched a book titled
Demystifying Islamic Finance—Correcting Misconceptions, Advancing Value
Propositions. Speaking at this event he stated:
We are taking a keen interest in ensuring there are no impediments to the development of
Islamic finance in this country, to allow market forces to operate freely. This is in line with
our commitment to foster an open and competitive financial system, and a socially inclusive
environment for all Australians. We also recognise that Islamic finance has great potential
for creating jobs and growth.
Importantly, in strong contrast to the stifling of debate about legal pluralism,

Sherry (2010) called for greater dialogue:
Some of the issues of concern include open claims that Islamic finance is used to spread
terrorism, that it is a vehicle to promote the world domination of Islam over other faiths, or
that it is designed to replace conventional financing. So we have a challenge in front of us –
and that is to continue the community dialogue, to increase awareness of the truth and to
highlight the facts.
In October 2010 the Australian Government Board of Taxation released a discus-

sion paper titled Review of the Taxation Treatment of Islamic Finance to inform
recommendations to ensure Islamic finance products “parity of tax treatment” with
conventional finance products (2010: vii). This was followed in April 2013 when
Bernie Ripoll, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer stated in a speech that
the “Australian Government regards the introduction of Islamic finance products
into the domestic market as a way to open our financial services sector—and our
economy—to new opportunities for growth” (2013).
Work continues to be undertaken to make Australia “Islamically competitive”,
with tight regulation slowing down the entry of Islamic banking and finance (Farrar
2011: 413). Irrespective of such constraints, Islamic financial institutions are breaking
new ground in Australia. In February 2010 the Westpac Bank launched a commodity
trading facility for overseas investors that operated according to Islamic principles
(Johnston 2010). In March 2012 The Australian newspaper revealed that The
National Australia Bank was considering selling over AU$500 million in Islamic bonds
(Henshaw 2012). In October 2012 Australian owned Islamic finance company
Crescent Wealth (whose advisory board features a variety of prominent non-Muslim

Australians including Emeritus Professor Dianne Yerbury AO, Nicholas Whitlam
and Ross Cameron) partnered with the “Bank of London and the Middle East” to
create a portfolio of Shari’a compliant companies in which Muslims could invest
(Crescent Wealth Press Release 2012). In December 2012 the same company
launched an Islamic compliant superannuation option, potentially the first of its
kind anywhere in the world. Speaking to the success of Crescent Finance is that in
the June–September 2013 quarter, the company’s Australian Equity fund was the
best performing in the country and rated by Bloomberg as the best-performing
Islamic equities fund in the world for the same period (Rose 2013).
It is clear at both the level of political discourse and government flexibility in
dealing with Shari’a that significant differences exist between legal pluralism and
financial opportunity. It is also clear that there is “space” for Shari’a and that
Australian legal frameworks are far more willing to make accommodations where a
financial imperative exists to do so.
6.7 The Artificial Division of Shari’a
This chapter has sought to test this political discourse about the “genius of Australian
multiculturalism”; and the Australian multiculturalism policy against an issue at the
forefront of challenges facing multicultural societies: Shari’a and legal pluralism.
It has revealed that political discourse about Shari’a and legal pluralism has been
strictly one way, with proponents of legal pluralism effectively shut down in public
debate. This appears to both support and contradict the government’s multicultural
principles. The political rejection of Shari’a and legal pluralism on one hand appears
supported by an emphasis on “national unit” in the first principle, but it does not
reflect the emphasis on responsiveness to CALD (Culturally and Linguistically
Diverse) communities outlined in the second principle of the Australian multicul-
tural policy.
In contrast to the debate about Shari’a and legal pluralism, the Government has
been overwhelmingly positive and receptive to the idea of Shari’a-compliant
finance, publically supporting its introduction, positing the potential economic ben-
efits, releasing publications designed to facilitate its entry into and development
within the Australian market, and working with Australian and overseas based
Muslims to assist the passage of Shari’a compliant measures through regulatory and
legal frameworks. These activities appear to sit comfortably within the third
principle of the multicultural policy, that of the potential for economic, trade and
investment benefits.
The treatment of Shari’a then would not appear particularly inconsistent with
Australia’s multicultural principles. At the level of political rhetoric and support
multiculturalism has evolved significantly from a vision based on inclusion to one
based on integration and economic growth.
6.8 Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Practice
It is argued here that the genesis of this division lies in the shift in Australia towards
neoliberal multiculturalism. To do so we draw upon Kymlicka’s (2013) work on the
topic. As Kymlicka notes, the “first-wave” of neoliberals were critical of multicul-
tural policies (MCPs) as an example of state intervention in the marketplace on
behalf of special interests. More recently however, neoliberal actors have identified the
potential for multiculturalism to integrate minorities into global markets, making
them both effective and competitive actors (2013: 11–12):
[…] neoliberals have found a way to legitimize ethnicity, and to justify MCPs that shelter
those ethnic projects, and to re-interpret these policies in line with neoliberalism’s core
ideas (enhancing economic competitiveness and innovation; shifting responsibility from
the state to civil society; promoting decentralization; de-emphasizing national solidarity in
favour of local bonds or transnational ties; viewing cultural diversity as an economic asset/
commodity in a global market).
Walsh supports this sentiment in the Australian context, stating that “Australia
presents a critical case for charting multiculturalism’s relationship with neoliberal
government” (2012: 281). Australian government policies on multiculturalism have
long discussed the positive economic benefits that may come from diversity. In isola-
tion, the enshrining of economic benefits in Australia’s current multicultural policy
arguably does not constitute a neoliberal shift. However it is in the selective practice
of the multicultural principles that the shift is evident. When one component of an
entire and holistic belief system—the economic dimension of Shari’a—is enthusias-
tically embraced by politicians, while the other—the cultural and civic—vehemently
rejected without any attempt to engage with the concept, it may be argued that we are
witnessing a key effect of neoliberal multiculturalism. As Kymlicka succinctly states:
Neoliberal multiculturalism for immigrants affirms—even valorises—ethnic immigrant
entrepreneurship, strategic cosmopolitanism, and transnational commercial linkages and
remittances, but silences debates on economic redistribution, racial inequality, unemploy-
ment, economic restructuring and labour rights. (2013:110)
In the Australian context, one might also add legal pluralism to this list. Kymlicka
draws upon the work of anthropologist Charles Hale, who in writing about the ori-
gins of neoliberal multicultural policies in Latin America noted:
The great efficacy of neoliberal multiculturalism resides in powerful actors’ ability to
restructure the arena of political contention, driving a wedge between cultural rights and the
assertion of the control over resources necessary for those rights to be realized. (2005: 13)
In effect, Australian Muslims have been denied the right to even talk publically
in the political arena about the cultural and legal dimensions of their faith. While at
the academic level much has been written about Shari’a, any Muslim leader who
dares to discuss legal pluralism publicly is placed at the centre of national media
attention and lectured on respect for Australian values. In its treatment of Shari’a,
the Australian Government’s actions, irrespective of national proclamations and
political rhetoric, signal a shift and a retreat from the original precepts of multicul-
turalism. Kymlicka states:
The original aims of multiculturalism—to build fairer terms of democratic citizenship

within nation-states—have been replaced with the logic of diversity as a competitive asset
for cosmopolitan market actors, indifferent to issues of racial hierarchy and structural
inequality. (2013:14)
Walsh considers that this has played out in the Australian context:
[…] as a strategy for managing diverse immigration, the policy has undergone a veritable
sea change from being framed within a national sociocultural context to a transnational
economic context. (2012: 297)
We argue that we are seeing a vigorous assertion of neoliberal multiculturalism

where the cultural dimension of ethnicity, or in this case, faith, is only so valuable
in the political arena as the tangible economic benefits it can offer. The concept of
legal pluralism and the accommodation of Shari’a in Australian courts, even if only
the civil sphere in areas such as arbitration and dispute resolution offers no such
economic benefits and will likely continue to remain unspeakable in contemporary
political discourse.
6.9 Conclusion
This retreat from a multiculturalism concerned with accommodation of different

minority communities and movement towards an Australian variant of neoliberal
multiculturalism has a variety of potential implications yet to be engaged with ade-
quately by scholars. As the evidence makes clear, one aspect of Shari’a will not
simply cease because politicians say it does not exist. Shari’a is shaping the civic
and social lives of many observant Australian Muslims and by extension, the wider
Australian Muslim communities. This political discourse could, on one hand be
deeply damaging to Muslim perceptions of their belonging and place in Australia.
Multicultural policies may be seen as increasingly irrelevant amongst observant
Muslims who may choose to insulate themselves against the extremes of contempo-
raneous debate and remove themselves from wider society, breaking down social
cohesion and the development of trust, mutual respect and belonging with their
non-Muslim neighbours. As Kymlicka (2013: 19–20) argues,
[…] multiculturalism is most effective when it attends both to people’s citizenship status
and to their market status. Either, on its own, may be inadequate. On the one hand, social
liberal forms of multiculturalism may fail if they leave their intended beneficiaries excluded
from effective market access […]. On the other hand, neoliberal reforms that expose
minorities to market reforms will also fail if minorities lack a robust citizenship standing
that enables their effective political agency.
In another negative light, the lack of self-reflexivity and openness to dialogue at

the political level may stunt the development of Australia’s intellectual and social
capital. Legitimate and strong cases both for and against legal pluralism exist and
we do not argue for one or another here. However a refusal to engage with observant
Muslims about this will ultimately only serve to undermine the preconditions for the
growth of collective intellectual development and social capital, including trust,

dialogue and mutual respect and recognition. This lack of reflexivity and incapacity
to grow intellectually and adapt to alternate cultures may work against Australia’s
national interests in the long term. Other nations, such as England, are actively seek-
ing to cultivate the development of Islamic finance and enterprise. Speaking in
October 2013, Boris Johnston, the Lord Mayor of London (the same city that faced
devastating terrorist attacks in 2005 and subsequently in 2013 at Woolwich) went to
remarkable lengths for any Western politician to win opportunities for his city, stat-
ing proudly his great-grandfather’s Muslim faith and announcing a £100 million
fund to encourage technological start-up companies from the Muslim world to
move to London. This came shortly after the Prime Minister David Cameron
announced a £200 million Muslim bond (Sukuk) and said that the London Stock
Exchange would launch an Islamic Index alongside the FTSE (in Chorley 2013).
Kymlicka points out that local Muslim communities—or at least those individuals
with the capital to do so—may embrace the opportunities of neoliberal multicultur-
alism, while maintaining their Islamic public identity. In referencing the experience
of indigenous groups (such as the Maori in New Zealand) utilising neoliberal
multiculturalism for self-empowerment it is noted:
The point, rather, is that where these democratic and decolonizing impulses have gained
political recognition—where forms of multicultural citizenship are in place—then indige-
nous people are capable of taking advantage of neoliberal reforms to enhance their status as
market actors, and to use their enhanced status as market actors to further strengthen their
ethnic projects of indigenous self-determination. (Kymlicka 2013: 18)
This is seen in the case of Crescent Finance, which is forcing non-Muslim busi-
nesses to take them seriously and hence challenging negative portrayals of Islam
and Muslims in the public sphere. This may have a flow down, “top-down” effect
and empower Muslims, while providing impetus for some recognition of Shari’a in
other legal and social contexts. Islam and Muslims, due to the holistic nature of the
Shari’a, with its prescriptive economic, cultural social and legal dimensions, may in
fact thrive in an Australian neoliberal multicultural environment as their status as
market actors increases. Research utilising Australian Bureau of Statistics data
between 2001 and 2011 by Peucker et al. (2014) suggests that we are seeing the
emergence of educated and financially successful Muslim elites with the necessary
capital to shape Australia’s political trajectory. The extent to which these
developments will benefit members of Australia’s Muslim communities without
such capital remains to be seen.
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Chapter 7
Multiculturalism and Education
Elizabeth Rata
Abstract This chapter examines the contemporary debate between supporters of

culture-based education and the social realist argument for a curriculum that takes
children away from the immediate world of experience, that is, “culture”. Arguing
that the dilemma for a culture-based curriculum—and the multicultural politics of
which it is a part—is that it excludes children of minority groups from the disciplin-
ary knowledge which would afford them entry into the world of abstract, objective
thought containing the potential for criticism of the very world from which the child
comes. The argument also recognises, however, that a child’s experience may be an
important pedagogical resource for entry into the world of disciplinary-based
curricular knowledge.
Keywords Culture-based education • Multicultural education • Intercultural

education • Social realism • Disciplinary knowledge • Enlightenment • Liberalism •
Indigenous knowledges • Local knowledges • New Zealand • Biculturalism
The relationship between the individual, the ethnic or cultural community, and the
broader society is a key theme in the debates about multicultural politics. It is an
issue that surfaces in education with the problem of persistent under-achievement
by some immigrant and indigenous minority groups in all education sectors. For
example with respect to Maori and immigrants from the Pacific Islands in New
Zealand, while “the participation rate in bachelors and higher qualifications has
increased for all young people; Māori and Pasifika continue to participate at higher
levels in non-degree qualifications and at lower levels in bachelors and higher
qualifications” (Ministry of Education 2014: 45).
This chapter examines the contemporary debate between supporters of culture-
based education on the one hand and the social realist argument on the other, with
examples from New Zealand illustrating the various points of difference. Social real-
ism argues for curricular knowledge that enables children to move away from the
immediate world of experience, that is, “culture”, while at the same time recognising
that the world of experience may serve as both a motivating and exemplifying
E. Rata (*)
Faculty of Education, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
e-mail: e.rata@auckland.ac.nz

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16003-0_7
108 E. Rata
pedagogical resource in this process. While both approaches support increasing

access to educational achievement for children from disadvantaged minority groups
they disagree about the cause of the under-achievement and how it is to be addressed.
In the final decades of the twentieth century multicultural politics gained ascendancy
because that approach was seen as the means to maintain both cultural communities
and the integrity of the wider society. Its redistributive policies that targeted disad-
vantaged ethnic and indigenous groups included culture-based schooling. This was
promoted as the means by which the symbolic resource “knowledge” could be more
equitably distributed. This is illustrated by a recent early childhood study in New
Zealand which showed how Maori sustainable ecological principles, in the main
universal principles, could be incorporated into the curriculum (Ritchie 2013).
Interestingly this study also illustrates the crucial point of difference between the two
approaches. The cultural approach emphasises the location of sustainability in the
intertwined whakapapa (genealogy) of the indigenous people and the land.
Since the turn of the century, there have been growing concerns about whether
the recognition of difference reinforces, indeed creates, an essentialised difference
that then becomes politicised. Critics of multicultural politics argue that the recog-
nition of difference reifies race/ethnicity enabling boundaries to be built between
social groups, with these divisions becoming fixed within government policies and
practices. Such practices may be seen in the way on which the principle of the
“Maori guardianship of knowledge”, promoted in New Zealand’s Tertiary
Framework policy (Tertiary Framework 2003) affects research activity and account-
ability (Rata 2013). Research using Maori participants or on “a topic of particular
interest to Maori” (University of Auckland’s Ethics Applicants’ Manual, 2009: 10)
must seek prior agreement from the Maori community. The researcher’s tribal
affiliation is also required.
The existence of an institutionalised ethnic category makes wider processes of
integration increasingly more difficult. This has weakened the faith in multicultural-
ism as the political project to maintain modernity’s progressivism and social justice
ideals. It is a loss of faith most markedly demonstrated in anthropologist Roger
Sutton’s (2009) powerful reconsideration of “the contrast between progressivist
public rhetoric about empowerment and self-determination and the raw evidence of
a disastrous failure in major aspects of Australian Aboriginal affairs policy since the
early 1970s” (2009: iii). In New Zealand the shift away from biculturalism (that
country’s version of multiculturalism) is most vividly illustrated in the growing
public objections to “co-governance” in local and national politics (NZCPR 2013).
The rejection of multiculturalism by politicians such as David Cameron in the UK
and Angela Merkel in Germany (see also Chap. 3) is part of a shift back to the idea
of the liberal social contract as the response to multiculturalism’s failure to balance
the relationship between individuals and society—a focus found in the nationwide
constitutional “conversation” held in New Zealand in 2013 (NZCPR 2013). In the classi-
cal liberal model, cultural and ethnic communities are seen as organisations of indi-
viduals who are free to join and to leave the group rather than an indivisible category
of people with political interests ascribed to the group (on liberal multiculturalism see
Chap. 4). The liberal model ascribes political status to the individual as a citizen,
7 Multiculturalism and Education 109
rather than ascribing political rights to the group. That fundamental difference
between the liberal idea of the voluntary membership of a particular community
and the indivisible ethnic group recognised by multicultural politics is at the heart
of the multiculturalism–liberal debate. The former is a political system for integrat-
ing people who do not share a common history, either in terms of cultural affiliation
or genetic descent (i.e. race or ethnicity). The latter looks to the past for its member-
ship criteria.
The intractable nature of the difference, however, does not mean that the initial
problems that multiculturalism was designed to overcome have lost any of their
potency. Those marginalised people who experience poverty, exclusion, discrimina-
tion, and educational failure are often indigenous and immigrant groups, recogni-
sable by their ethnic identity and their cultural practices. Experiences of
discrimination occur because of this difference. Ignoring the difference does not
make the serious disadvantages experienced by groups and individual members of
those groups disappear. Those problems remain and must be addressed for the sake
both of the disadvantaged groups themselves but also to maintain the moral legiti-
macy of the democratic social contract. The social justice imperative that character-
ises multiculturalism is also a fundamental democratic ideal, one which suffers with
the existence of marginalised and disadvantaged groups. It is in the interests of both
types of politics to find equitable solutions to the relationship between the individ-
ual, the ethnic or cultural community, and the wider society. Indeed New Zealand’s
bicultural project was grounded in the moral imperative of redistributive politics.
Former prime minister, Helen Clark, had expressed this imperative when she spoke
of biculturalism as the way to the “good” society, based upon “the principles of
justice, equity and partnership” (New Zealand Herald, 27 January 1995: 3). This is
not a new problem for modern society of course. Indeed the discipline of sociology
arose in response to explaining the basic questions of modernity: “what is the way
in which the individual is embedded in wider groupings?” (Macfarlane 2002: 5). In
the shift from the status relation of traditional societies to the contractual relation-
ship of modern society, what forms of cohesion ensure that society maintains its
integrity? The alternative is a fragmentation into historical social groups bounded
by traditional ethnic and cultural ties.
From the late nineteenth century national education systems have played a major
integrating role in the cohesion of modern societies (Ramirez and Boli 2007). New
Zealand adopted a pragmatic approach. Its 1877 Education Act contained exemp-
tions from compulsory schooling. Catholics who objected to the Protestant view of
history could withdraw their children from History classes. Those Maori tribes that
had fought against the colonial government were not compelled to send their chil-
dren to school although by the turn of the twentieth century this exemption was no
longer required as universal schooling became widely accepted.
By the 1970s however, the failure of those systems to include all groups equitably
led to a loss of faith about whether education did provide equal opportunities or
simply reproduced the disadvantages experienced by historically oppressed groups.
For those on the Left who took the “cultural” turn, eschewing class analysis to focus
on identity as the primary socio-political category, the answer to minority group
110 E. Rata
disadvantage was to be the politics of recognition, i.e. multiculturalism (Rata 2012a,

b). Culturalists argued that the purpose of education should be to promote the iden-
tity of the oppressed group through culture-based schooling. The development of
the kaupapa Maori education system in New Zealand is one example of this
approach (Rata 2012a). Yet, even this system has failed to grow beyond a core of
committed Maori. For example, numbers of kohanga reo—the early childhood
Maori language centres based on kaupapa Maori philosophy—have declined rap-
idly from the peak of 767 in 1996 to 464 kohanga in 2009 (Education Counts 2009).
The decrease has continued with enrolments down 2 % between 2012 and 2013
despite a 6.2 % increase in Maori early childhood at the same time (Education
Counts 2013).
By the late 1990s, growing concern within the sociology of education emerged
about whether culture-based education was, in fact, the solution to the persistent
intergenerational under-achievement of minority ethnic and indigenous children.
The concern contributed to the emergence of what is referred to broadly as the social
realist approach (Maton and Moore 2010; Barrett and Rata 2014). This approach
addressed two main questions: “what should be taught at school?” and “how could
access to that knowledge be ensured for the children of the working-class and
minority groups?”
Both social realists and cultural theorists address the same problem of minority
group under-achievement, but explain the problem differently and provide quite
different solutions. Culturalists argue that the purpose of schooling is to socialise
children first into their ethnic, cultural, or indigenous group (Smith 1999). This
provides the knowledge and primary socialisation that will afford the foundation for
the child to enter the wider society. Social realists, on the other hand, argue that the
purpose of schooling is to teach what cannot be taught at home or in the community.
It is to teach the higher-order powerful knowledge developed in the disciplines of
the arts, humanities, and sciences (Young and Muller 2013). As a distinctive
approach in the contemporary sociology of education, social realism can be traced
to the seminal works of Michael Young (1998, 2008), Rob Moore (2007, 2013) and
Johan Muller (2000).
Drawing on the intellectual heritage of Emile Durkheim and Basil Bernstein
(Moore 2013), social realists differentiate higher order or powerful knowledge from
the social knowledge or culture of the family and local community, i.e. the knowl-
edge acquired through experience. The first is referred to variously as disciplinary,
scientific, objective, academic and esoteric, with the knowledge of experience also
going by a number of referents including social knowledge, everyday, folk, doxic,
commonsense, popular, or culture (Rata 2012a). Social realists argue that the purpose
of schooling is to teach epistemic knowledge, the type of knowledge unavailable at
home, certainly less available to those from working-class and minority group back-
grounds. For example, Young argues that “schools are places where the world is
treated as an object of thought and not as a place of experience” (2010a: 25). This
is not to say that social realists are unaware of the importance of social knowledge,
i.e. culture. Its importance is seen in that it is the means by which a child is socialised
into his or her family and community. It is also the means for a community’s
cohesion. It is the knowledge that strengthens culture. This explains the purpose of
culture-based education to the wider politics of multiculturalism; such education
contributes to the group’s distinctiveness thereby supporting its claim for recogni-
tion. In contrast, epistemic or disciplinary knowledge, through its universalism,
objectivity and critical capacity, serves to challenge, and hence, change, culture.
This goes against the imperative of multiculturalism which is to reinforce the
distinctiveness of the ethnic group by reifying its immutable culture. For that reason
multiculturalism and social realism are necessarily hostile in their understandings of
the relationship between individuals, communities and society.
There are, however, some points of agreement. Both social realists and cultural
theorists concur that disciplinary knowledge is produced within a socio-historical
context. For the former knowledge becomes independent of that context, as a result
of its generative principles and concepts and through procedures of scrutiny and
critique (see for example, Moore 2007; Young 2008). The debate between the two
approaches centres on that notion of the separation of “text” from “context”. For
cultural theorists the social basis of knowledge means that knowledge remains tied
to the knower. It is, therefore, always subjective and in the interests of the “knowers”;
always from the standpoint of the knowledge “producer” (Maton and Moore 2010).
In contrast, social realists, argue that knowledge can become separated from its
producer and from the context within which it is produced, and is therefore objec-
tive and universal. This process of separation is traced to Emile Durkheim’s differ-
entiation between the “sacred” as the collective representations of an internally
consistent world of concepts and the “profane” or everyday world of practical
activities (Muller 2000; Moore 2013). According to Durkheim (1983: 86):
In the history of human thought there are two kinds of mutually contrasting truths, namely,
mythological and scientific truths. In the first type, all truth is a body of propositions which
are accepted without verification, as against scientific truths, which are always subjected to
testing or demonstration.
In this understanding, culture is, like science, a symbolic order of collective

representations, but it is not, as with science, knowledge separated from its produc-
ers. Whereas cultural knowledge remains connected to the social community in
order to serve socialising and cohesive functions, science has developed within dis-
ciplinary communities in order to change society by developing new understand-
ings and by standing in a critical relation to the socio-political order. It is these
disciplinary communities that establish the conditions, thereby objectifying and
universalising the knowledge. The sociality of knowledge is developed within social
and historical conditions with the knowledge objectified through the use of disci-
plinary concepts and procedures. Indeed objectification is the mechanism by which
knowledge is separated from its producing conditions, thereby to exist as a material
“product”. Crucially the knowledge “object” can be universalised, and made available
to all people regardless of the time in which they live and the culture into which they
were born. In other words, the objectified knowledge is no longer “culture” but
“science”. It is also significant that the processes of separation, objectification, and
universalisation that enable science are authorised, not by the scientist who creates
112 E. Rata
the knowledge and is socially located, but by disciplinary concepts and procedures
of scrutiny and criticism.
The cultural-based approach to education understands the purpose of education
differently from the social realists. The concept of localised “knowledges”, also
referred to as voice discourses and standpoint approaches (Moore and Muller 2010),
conflates the knower with the known and rejects the concepts of objectivity and
universalism. Indeed an indigenous theorist refers to objectivity as dehumanising
(Smith 1999). The development of various forms of localised epistemologies such
as “red knowledge” (Grande 2004), kaupapa Maori knowledge (Smith 1999),
Africana knowledge, and “Southern knowledge” (Connell 2007) provides the theo-
retical justification for culture-based schooling. It also contributes the intellectual
rationale for the distinctive “voice” of the ethnicised group to be recognised as the
authority for the knowledge created by this “voice”. The concept of the “Other” is
central to this process in that it creates the essential character of the ethnic or indig-
enous group as distinctive and separate from all other groups.
In order to establish the theoretical “Other”, scientific or disciplinary knowledge
is positioned in relation to ethnic or indigenous knowledges; that is, science is also
conceptualised as cultural knowledge with its potential to serve as the ideology of
its respective cultural group. In the case of science, because this type of disciplinary
knowledge was first developed in the West, the knowledge is understood by postco-
lonial or culturalist writers as “Western” knowledge (e.g. Connell 2007). In this
approach each group’s knowledge is relative to that of any other group—to be
judged only within its own terms and not according to a universal standard.
According to cultural theorists, all knowledge is the knowledge of the group which
developed the knowledge. It remains linked to that group’s social and historical
circumstances so cannot be known and judged by the “Other”.
These group “knowledges” or voice discourses stand in opposition to the knowl-
edge of the group’s historical political opponents. Hence, in New Zealand for exam-
ple, kaupapa Maori knowledge is positioned in opposition to Western knowledge,
understood as the knowledge of the coloniser (Hoskins and Jones 2012). This is the
logic justifying culture-based education such as the kaupapa Maori system. Its pur-
pose is to decolonise the indigenous group in order for that group to recognise its
distinctiveness, and following from that, to position its political voice in that distinc-
tiveness—in the politics of difference. For this reason, the kaupapa Maori system
must retain and develop its separateness given that the rationale for its existence is
that it is essentially different. In this way, culture-based education promotes a par-
ticular relationship between the individual and society with the individual under-
stood in terms of that person’s group membership.
One of the issues for writers in the modern period, including early ones such as
Immanuel Kant ([1781] 1993), Hegel ([1820] 1967) John Stuart Mill ([1859] 1985),
Emile Durkheim (1956) and Antonio Gramsci (in Muller 2000) was to explain the
role of education in the individualisation that is the characteristic feature of moder-
nity (Friedman 1994, 2000). Kant used the phrase “the strife of the dialectic” ([1781]
1993: 488) to describe the existentialist position whereby children are turned to face
the world to engage as free thinkers but at the same time remain linked affectively
to their families and communities. He called this strife “a necessity of reason”

regarding critical thinking as impossible without the faculty to objectify and criti-
cise one’s own circumstances—the first political act of the free person. Crucially
this makes knowledge always political because the critical faculty is an act of
self-authorisation. No longer bound by the liturgies of the priest, patriarch, and
politician, the critical individual is the author of his or her own thought (Kant
[1784] 1990).
From this contradictory position, the individual is able to mediate the relationship
between the world and the family through the development of his or her own identity
as a separate and autonomous individual. This is the person who is simultaneously
attached to, and separated from, the kin or ethnic group. Such partial loyalty (Rata
2012a, b) makes possible the idea of a common universal humanity as well as the
possibility of reflexive objective thought—fundamental features of modernity. The
child is able to move outside the confined world of the particular where learning is
based on experience to the world where experience is treated as an object of thought
(Young 2010b). The school’s role is to enable this separation, not to enlarge the
experiential world of the family and community as is the case for cultural-based
education. Hegel also saw education as the means to take the individual beyond the
immediate world of the family and community, saying that
[…] education bears upon the child’s capacity to become a member of society. In its char-
acter as the universal family […] society’s right here is paramount over the arbitrary and
contingent preferences of parents. (Hegel [1820] 1967: 148, paragraph 239)
Despite the tendency by contemporary cultural theorists to claim that Western

writers position the individual and society in opposition (Smith 1999), early modern
writers about society were well aware that “no man is an island”. John Donne had
made that clear in the late eighteenth century. John Stuart Mill also understood that
individuals must become social if the liberal idea of the social contract was to be
viable. Like Kant and Hegel, schooling was to involve taking children out of the
immediate kinship circle, out of the world of the particular and the local. Mill talked
about education,
[…] taking them [i.e. children] out of the narrow circle of personal and family selfishness,
and accustoming them to the comprehension of joint interests, the management of joint
concerns-habituating them to act from public or semi-public motives, and guide their conduct
by aims which unite instead of isolating them from one another. ([1859] 1985: 181)
But how was Kant’s dialectic individual–societal relation to be achieved? To

answer this question, social realists turned to the ideas of Emile Durkheim, whose
central concern was with the nature of the social. Sherwood D. Fox, in his introduc-
tion to the 1956 edition of Durkheim’s Education and Sociology, points out that
Durkheim’s analysis of education contains the foundation of his sociological realist
position on the mutually constructive relationship of society and the individual (my
italics); for Durkheim, “it is possible to individualize while socializing” (Fox in
Durkheim 1956: 33). Individualising was essential because while knowledge is
developed within communities of thinkers, it is the individual who thinks. But this
is not the lone scientist who must generate ideas in isolation. It is in the sociality of
114 E. Rata
the canon that collective representations of a discipline are generated. According to

Durkheim (1995: 15),
Collective representations are the product of immense cooperation that extends not only in
space but also through time; to make them, a multitudes of different minds have associated,
intermixed, and combined their experience and knowledge. A very special intellectuality
that is infinitely richer and more complex than that of the individual is distilled in them.
Individuals become socialised as thinkers within the sociality of knowledge. The fact
that the induction into epistemic communities occurs in a very social place—the
school—is of immense significance. In culture-based schools the child is re-
socialised into the knowledge of the group’s culture and into social relations with
his or her primary community. In schools that serve the nation-state and its contrac-
tual society, the child is socialised into two different orders; first into the sociality of
knowledge that comes from disciplinary communities; second, into the social rela-
tions of other people who are also entering this epistemic community. The child at
school meets others who are there, not because they are related in kinship or belong
to the same ethnic or indigenous group, but because they are being socialised into a
new modern community; the universal community envisaged by Enlightenment
thinkers. Entering this wider world, however, requires the capacity to think in
abstract, objective ways. According to Gramsci, this was the job of the school,
[…] to accustom [the students] to reason, to think abstractly and schematically while
remaining able to plunge back from abstraction into real and immediate life, to see in each
fact or datum what is general and what is particular, to distinguish the concept from the
particular instance. (1986: 38 in Muller 2000:7–8)
Without the ability to think in abstract ways, the child is confined to the world of
immediate experience, unable to conceptualise that experience objectively and
therefore criticise and change it and unable to enter social worlds that are not known
from experience. The school should be subversive of culture because it offers a way
out of the immediate by providing the means by which the immediate can be objec-
tified. The act of objectification is the act of separation. It is the alien world of the
school, alien in that it is different from the home. Yet the child must also be attached
to the particular because that world is the place of primary socialisation.
This is a central problem for schooling, one that affects children from the
working-class and minority groups particularly; how to cross into the alien world of
the school. Sufficient links exist between home and school for the middle-class
child to enter into the “strife of the dialectic” which regulates the relationship
between the particular and the universal. Yet working-class and minority students
are confronted with two distinct worlds (Bernstein 2000). According to social real-
ists who draw on the ideas of Basil Bernstein in tackling this issue (Moore 2013),
the task of schooling must include a pedagogy that provides a link (Young 2010b;
Young and Muller 2010; Morais and Neves 2011; McPhail 2012, 2013) between the
two worlds while at the same time interrupting the relationship between those
worlds. While culture-based schooling is equally concerned with the alienation of
the minority child, the solution is to make the school an extension of the home.
Social realists object to this arguing that while it solves the alienation problem it
creates a greater one. Young people who are denied access to powerful disciplinary
knowledge are denied the means to move beyond experience.
This dilemma creates a formidable pedagogical task. When students have not
encountered abstract knowledge, teachers have a double pedagogical challenge, one
that requires that “clear conceptual map” (Winch 2013: 138) if the challenge is to be
met. They must introduce the child to a new form of cognitive activity, one in which
abstractions, represented by the symbols of literacy and numeracy, are the starting
point. If these symbols are not found in the child’s experience, as may occur espe-
cially with working-class and disadvantaged children, the process can be bewilder-
ing and even alienating (Bernstein 2000; Bourdieu 2004). And yet, if the first levels
of abstract thought and their symbolic representations are not understood, it is
unlikely that the child will be able to progress to the next levels (Vykotsky 1962).
Vygotsky (1962: 85), however, recognised that, although the spontaneous of the
everyday world and scientific concepts are distinct from each other, they are also
“related and constantly influence each other”. This complex relationship may well
be the pedagogic site for mediation between the context-dependent knowledge of
students’ experience and the context-independent knowledge of the academic sub-
ject. It is important to note however, that Vygotsky (1962) maintained his emphasis
on the importance of instruction. Accordingly, “school instruction induces the gen-
eralising kind of perception and thus plays a decisive role in making the child con-
scious of his own mental processes” (1962: 92). Referring to his research which
found that instruction usually precedes development (1962: 101), Vygotsky described
“processes of instruction” (as) “awaken(ing) and direct(ing) a system of processes in
the child’s mind” (1962: 102), leading to his conclusion that “the only good kind of
instruction is that which marches ahead of development and leads it” (1962: 104).
A pedagogy that recognises the need to motivate students may well acknowledge
a place for students’ experience but by using that experience to illustrate the abstract
ideas already introduced in the academic subjects. This is not the same as starting
with experience or as using experience as the source of knowledge itself which is the
approach taken by cultural-based education. Vygotsky justifies including a stu-
dent’s “meaning-making” in his understanding of the nature of the relationship
between experience and scientific concepts as one that “allows for both a universal-
ising form of knowledge and the constitutive development of local meaning-
making” (Derry 2014: 11). He insists, however, on the primacy of direct instruction
in academic concepts. This point is important for social realist theorists who advocate
for a “powerful knowledge” curriculum but one that also has an engaging pedagogy
and a progressive social justice purpose (Maton and Moore 2010; Young and
Muller 2013; Barrett and Rata 2014).
The “strife of the dialectic” offers individuals the means to be partially loyal to
one’s ancestral group and partially loyal to those one does not know. In contrast,
children who have no way out of the immediate group are left in the binaries of self
and other, colonised and coloniser, ethnic and “Western”. These reified and ahistori-
cal categories confine young people to the world of experience and deny them the
means to transcend the limits of culture. In addition they are denied the means with
which to criticise and change the localised world of experience, i.e. culture, and the
116 E. Rata
means to enter the culture of modernity. This is the way of thinking and being that
is the means by which the alienation between the particular and the universal may
be overcome. In contrast, education systems that use disciplinary knowledge liber-
ate students, not only by what is taught but because what is taught “liberates the
person from the limitations of the present and the particular” (Bailey 1984: 20) and
provides the means to accommodate the strife of the dialectic that is the existential
condition of modernity.
Democratic politics can accommodate the dissent that results from critical think-
ing because the political system itself operates on that dialectic of strife. In the case
of democracy that dialectic arises from the structural contradictions in each of the
three elements of the democracy regime. The first element, the nation, is an imagi-
nary that contains the idea of continuity but has a population who do not share a
common past. Second, the state, the nation’s regulatory framework is simultane-
ously the capitalist state producing inequality and the democratic state, regulating
equality. The third element, the citizen, also contains these intrinsic contradic-
tions—the citizen is simultaneously the unequal worker and the equal subject.
Lacking this structural dialectic, traditional groups must either maintain total loy-
alty or fragment.
Children in the education systems of democratic nations can be educated into the
type of knowledge that changes the world. They will enter a democratic politics that
has the strife of the dialectic just as they will acquire this way of being as their own
existential condition. Abstract thinking not only provides the intellectual tools of
objectification and criticism, but it provides a social community—a “culture” but one
unlike the kinship or ethnic culture of groups that draws on the past for their cohesion.
The knowledge “culture” is future–oriented, universal, and inclusive. It is based on
disciplines that allow us to see the world in new, previously unthinkable ways. Having
access to this world brings the child into the sociality of knowledge; into a way of
thinking that, because it is based on provisional thinking, cannot offer the guarantee
of stability that traditionalism offers. As compensation, it offers access to the unthink-
able, to the “not–yet thought”, and does so from a foundation in the “coalitions of
minds” (Collins 2000: 7). This is the knowledge built up over centuries through the
cooperative endeavours of individuals working in social contexts and relating to other
individuals according to the social mores of the discipline’s procedures:
The guiding ideas elaborated by our civilization are collective ideas that must be transmit-
ted to the child, because he would not know, how to elaborate them alone. One does not
recreate science through one’s own personal experience, because it is social and not indi-
vidual; one learns it. (Durkheim 1956: 48)
Durkheim’s ideas speak of the latent philosophy in the disciplines as “a system

of cardinal notions which sum up the most characteristics of things as we conceive
them, and which govern their interpretation”. He calls this philosophy “the product
of the cumulative work of generations, that must be transmitted to the child, because
it constitutes the very framework of the intelligence” (1956: 50). This is the univer-
sal knowledge inheritance most vividly captured in Bourdieu’s phrase: “A twenty-
year-old mathematician can have twenty centuries of mathematics in his mind”
(Bourdieu 2004: 40). The task for education is to include the children of minority
groups in this inheritance, knowing that entering into the world of abstract, objective
thought contains the potential for criticism of the very world from which the child
comes. This is the dilemma, not only for culture-based schooling, but for the multi-
cultural politics of which it is a part.
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Chapter 8
“The Only Blonde in the Playground”: School
Choice and the Multicultural Imaginary
Georgina Tsolidis
Abstract The title of this chapter draws on a comment made by a colleague

explaining her choice to leave inner city Melbourne and move to a country town.
She did not want her son to be the “only blonde in the [school] playground”. Unlike
many suburbs of Melbourne that are home to large ethnic minority communities
(commonly not blonde), regional Victoria is imagined ‘white’. This evocative com-
ment is taken as a starting point for an exploration of how markets and school choice
intersect with cultural difference to make some schools more or less desirable in the
public imagination. Current debates in the press about which students have access
to sought-after Government schools are drawn on to illustrate the salience of ethnicity
in representations of schools and their communities and the impact of this on deci-
sion-making about school choice. Drawing on Foucault’s notion of heterotopian
space, the argument is made that with regard to the constitution of a “good” school,
some ethnicities are seen as more valuable than others because they achieve good
results. However, if high-achieving “non-white” students are seen as “taking over”
a school this can shift the balance the other way.
Keywords Multiculturalism • Marketisation • White flight • Racism • School

choice • Heterotopia • Whiteness
School markets have become entrenched in Australia and this approach to education
enjoys the support of conservative and less conservative governments alike. Market
forces are coupled with increased accountability and transparency measures. These
measures, it is argued, are a critical way of providing parents with information that
will allow them to make informed choices when selecting schools. The process
allows for supply and demand to instigate change because the community will rec-
ognise underperforming schools and vote with their feet, thus forcing schools, on
pain of closure, to change their approach. This market logic assumes choice, and yet
for many families exercising choice may not be possible. The ability to choose
G. Tsolidis (*)
Faculty of Education and Arts, Federation University of Australia, Mount Helen, Australia
e-mail: g.tsolidis@federation.edu.au

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16003-0_8
120 G. Tsolidis
schools and the basis for selection of schools remains a complex issue responsive to
a range of factors including class and ethnicity.
The impact of marketisation is dramatic within the government sector, where a
form of self-sustaining residualisation has emerged. Some government schools
manage to perform at similar levels to those achieved by elite non-government
schools. These performance levels are linked to “creaming”; that is, using different
means of attracting the types of students likely to do well academically. In turn,
these students create a culture of success that reinforces itself because these schools
attract more applicants than they can accommodate and thus are able to select stu-
dents on their own terms. In this way, choice becomes the prerogative of the schools
rather than the families. Applicants need to pass tests to enter such schools or make
a case as to why they will be good for the school, for example, through their musical
prowess. The corollary of this dynamic is that other government schools are often
constructed as “safety nets” for families that cannot exercise choice and in this way
become associated with students less likely to succeed. This binary between “good”
and “bad” schools, once set up, becomes self-fulfilling and entrenched.
Given the premium attached to education, it is not surprising that high-
performing government schools are sought after. For many families that cannot
afford the high fees charged by elite independent schools, high performing govern-
ment schools provide an important opportunity for upward social mobility. There is
ready debate about the types of families that access these schools. Some commen-
tators argue that the middle class has the cultural capital required to get their chil-
dren into these schools because of their existing social networks that inform them
of entry requirements. Similarly they can afford to ready their children for entry by
providing music lessons or coaching for entry examinations. The middle class can
afford to live in the areas where these schools are located, and, importantly, the
middle class has aspirations and understands and values education as a means of
attaining these (Teese 2007; Campbell et al. 2009). Yet the argument that it is
mainly middle class families that access high-performing government schools
needs to be further examined. Implicit is the assumption that working class families
are somehow less motivated to enter university and do not have requisite knowl-
edge about how best to do so. This debate also raises the hoary issue of how ‘working
class’ is constituted and its relationship to factors such as, “race”/ethnicity and
gender. These factors intersect and in so doing challenge taken for granted assump-
tions about who has high educational aspirations and achievements (Goyette 2008;
Ball et al. 2011; Bodovski 2010).
In this chapter access to high-performing government schools will be considered
in relation to racialised minorities, and the recent commentary that these groups are
“taking over” such schools. In particular, Chinese and Indian students are seen as
displacing “white” students, whose parents go on to pay the high fees required by
elite independent schools. This has prompted some commentators to ask whether
this “white flight” precipitates a form of quarantine in independent schools
(Mavisakalyan 2012). These minorities are also seen as shifting the school ethos
away from western models of liberal education (an extension of this debate is con-
sidered in Chap. 7). Thus, even when minority students perform well academically,
8 “The Only Blonde in the Playground”: School Choice and the Multicultural Imaginary 121
they are judged to be bad for other students. The relationship between school choice,
class and ethnicity is a particularly pertinent issue given Australia’s history of migra-
tion. This relationship is important because a strong motivation for settling in the
country has been the educational aspirations that parents have for their children.
School choice debates have the potential to tell us about racism and how com-
munities are imagined. It is in this sense, that this topic becomes the canary in the
multicultural mine. If parents feel uncomfortable about their child being “the only
blonde in the playground” what does this tell us about social cohesion more gener-
ally? (see Chap. 12 on race hierarchies and social cohesion in Australian multicul-
turalism). Debates about imagined community (Anderson 1991) and the role of
schools in their constitution, draw attention to the value of whiteness. For some
parents, paying expensive fees to enter “quarantined” independent schools or mov-
ing out of the cosmopolitan city to a rural town imagined as culturally homoge-
neous, seems worth the price. This opens the lid on the role of schooling vis-à-vis
multiculturalism. In the past, schools were understood to enact multiculturalism
through social cohesion policies directed at all students (Tsolidis 2008). With the
dominance of market forces, there is the possibility that school choice has become
ethnicised and that this overlay has lain bare who we constitute as part of our com-
munity (on the intersection of market forces and multiculturalism see Chap. 6).
School choice, markets and cultural difference will be explored with reference to
policy introduced by the Australian federal Labor Government along with debates
in the press about “white flight”. These explorations are framed using Foucault’s
notion of heterotopian space.
8.1 Government Schools as Heterotopias
In his influential lecture “Of Other Spaces” (1986) Foucault differentiates utopias
and heterotopias. He argues that utopias are unreal because they represent an ideal
or perfected form of society. By contrast heterotopias exist within society but remain
contested and are characterised by their capacity to capture multiple representations
simultaneously. He argues that;
The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites
that are in themselves incompatible. (Foucault and Miskowiec 1986: 25)
Foucault illustrates this point by example of the cinema. Through a flat screen
placed in a rectangular room, a myriad of different, incompatible places are brought
into the same space and experienced by those within it. Foucault also suggests that
heterotopias occupy a space between all other places. At one extreme heterotopian
space is illusory and evokes another place of desire. At, the other extreme,
heterotopian space is compensatory because it seeks to impose order onto an existing
landscape understood as chaotic. Between utopias and heterotopias, there are mirrors.
Foucault describes the mirror as both virtual and real. It offers a “placeless place”,
and because of this placelessness the mirror remains utopian. A mirror however is
122 G. Tsolidis
also real, and by looking into it we can see ourselves against the position we occupy.
We are at once real where we stand, while looking at ourselves standing somewhere
else. In this sense the mirror is heterotopian because it captures multiple representa-
tions—the here and the there—a simultaneous presence and absence.
In a similar fashion government schools are heterotopian; they capture multiple
representations of what a school should be. It is anticipated that these schools,
regardless of their resources, can provide all students with the opportunity to suc-
ceed, irrespective of the students’ background and needs. There is an ideal that
students from government schools should be able to achieve the marks necessary to
enter prestigious universities alongside students who have attended elite indepen-
dent schools. Schools as heterotopian spaces are also intended to capture cultural
difference and through policies informed by multiculturalism, work towards social
cohesion. There is an illusion that a sense of respect for, and exposure to, diversity
exists and benefits all students, and at the same time there is an imposition of order
through teaching that inculcates a sense of national belonging framed through
dominant discourses. In this sense government schools are part of the paradox of
liberalism whereby respect for difference is eulogised, but not to the point where
dominant institutional practices, including those that constitute Australianness are
destabilised (Tsolidis 2010, 2011).
8.2 Marketing a False Sense of Order
School choice is strongly associated with neoliberalism and the concomitant shrink-
ing of government. Privatisation and the imperatives of the market are intended to
provide “the consumer” with the capacity to choose, including, in its most extreme
form, through voucher systems. Choice is said to create good schools because it
links to market forces of supply and demand and makes schools responsive to what
parents want for their children. In Australia, government and non-government
schools are presented on My School; a public website that brings together critical
information on all schools, including centrally administered student test scores
related to literacy and numeracy (referred to with the acronym “NAPLAN”). This is
intended to supply parents with information that will inform their decision-making.
While this style of public review of schools is associated with conservative govern-
ments, in Australia My School was established and championed by the Labor Party
(representing the left of the political spectrum in Australia), with the then Minister
for Education, Julia Gillard, stating that it would promulgate reform (AAP 2010)—
this, despite strong opposition to the website from teacher unions and some princi-
pal and parent groups.
The My School website provides information on 10,000 Australian government
and non-government schools. The first version of the controversial website was
criticised because it did not provide enough context that may go some way to
explaining discrepancies between schools. In particular there was concern about the
amount of information that was provided on the socioeconomic status of school
communities and financial information, particularly for non-government schools,

which would shed light on differential resourcing (Bonner 2010). The website was
re-launched in 2011 and made responsive to a new Index of Community Socio-
Economic Educational Advantage (ICSEA). This allows schools to be compared
in relation to “students from statistically similar backgrounds” (ACARA 2011).
The new ICSEA also included information on the proportions of students from a
“language background other than English” along with the previously included
information on remoteness and indigeneity.
Many who were wary of this initiative were concerned that a culture of “teach-
ing to tests” would proliferate, and that those students deemed likely to jeopardise
the overall school score would be excluded from high performing schools, thus
feeding the polarisation between “good” and “bad” schools (Leslie 2010). This
shedding of students likely to bring down averages would be accompanied by
attempts to attract students seen as most likely to achieve high scores. There are
indications that these fears were warranted. Recent research suggests that, amongst
other things, curriculum and pedagogy has been shaped by this testing system, the
results of which shape the character of schools in the public imagination (Dulfer
et al. 2012). Marketisation, school choice and the ranking of schools and students,
makes the pre-emptive judgment about a student’s capacity to perform on high-
stake testing increasingly significant. The emphasis on representing good perfor-
mance is so intense that schools use various means to regulate their image, including
controlling which students sit for relevant tests (Barrett and Minus 2010; Maguire
et al. 2011; Ravich 2010). Students for whom English is a second language and
those considered to have a learning disability are amongst these (Topsfield 2010;
Dulfer et al. 2012).
8.3 High Performing Government Schools: Unreal Utopias?
The My School website provides information on schools, including results for

literacy and numeracy tests. The literacy and numeracy tests that distribute students
and schools along league tables are intended to place order over chaos. In Foucault’s
terms these function as the mirror that allows us to see ourselves here, in the place
where we are, and there, in the place where we want to be. In this way the My School
website becomes a “placeless place” with very real consequences for students and
their families. Providing a sense of order on a diverse range of schools through the
My School website is likely to affect government schools more than non-government
schools because the public’s perception of particular government schools can create
huge demand for some and threaten the viability of others. The My School website
produces an imaginary whereby government schools are judged as though it is the
curriculum or the pedagogy that produces good results, when it is more likely that
these results are the product of pre-emptive judgment about the types of students
most likely to compete well on high-stake testing. Establishing this potential in
students is commonly, but not solely, done through entry testing.
124 G. Tsolidis
Government schools that are select entry achieve some of the best school
examination results, sometimes out-performing elite independent schools. In
Victoria, for example, Mac.Robinson Girls School consistently achieves the highest
VCE results of all Victorian schools (Leung 2006). In 2011 it was again ranked
number 1, a feat the Principal attributed to the hard work of staff and students, rather
than the fact that the school has a selective cohort (Mac.Roberston Newsletter, Dec
2011). Other government schools, which are not formally select entry, also achieve
strong results. Much like select entry schools, these are notoriously difficult for
prospective families to access. High demand for entry is managed through testing
for accelerated programmes, commonly in the sciences; policing the boundaries of
unpredictable school zones; and specialised curriculum pathways, such as music
and language curriculum, understood to identify students with aptitudes for aca-
demic success. Real estate agents use such schools to leverage the sale of properties
in their zones. The demand for housing stock near these schools is so high that
couples will begin to seek properties on the birth of their first child. Families will
misrepresent where they live so that their child can attend the school. Enrolling
students likely to succeed is coupled with strategies to exit students who are deemed
a risk. Strong counselling, pressure to perform and a limited curriculum often work
to discourage certain types of students (Tsolidis 2006). Getting a child into a select-
entry or high performing government school occupies parents over long periods of
time. Those who have not managed to acquire property in the relevant school zone
turn their attention to subject selection and preparing their children for the entry
examinations, including through coaching.
There is an interesting paradox developing as some government schools—
deemed most desirable because of student achievement—are simultaneously
becoming less favoured by some parents, because they enrol large numbers of
“Asian” students. Unlike “white flight” whereby parents flee because they fear
racialised students will lower academic standards, here we have a situation where
parents flee because of high-achieving students, particularly Chinese and Indian
students, who are represented as a threat to the school ethos. The fact that parents
flee to expensive independent schools brings home that this is a debate about who
accesses limited resources—relatively inexpensive government schools that achieve
excellent academic results—as much as it is a debate about the character of the
schools these parents want their children to attend. This argument will be illustrated
through press commentary below and then discussed further in relation to what is
constituted as a desirable school ethos.
8.4 The Colour of Good Results
“New arrivals chase a place at the top” (Milburn 2010) was the title of a newspaper
article in which the author described the scene outside the hall where hundreds of
students were waiting to sit the examination that would determine whether they
could enter one of the four Victorian select-entry government secondary colleges.
These students were described as “mostly Asian”, migrants whose families had
moved to provide children with a better education and more opportunities in life.
The article states that some students, again “mostly Asian”, travel for 2 h in order to
attend such schools. Other high-performing government schools are also described
in this article as “Asianised”. A real-estate agent is quoted stating that Chinese fami-
lies are outbidding others and buying properties near these schools with the result
that the percentage of sales to Chinese families has increased from 30 to 50 in
10 years. Representatives of coaching colleges are quoted stating that 75 % of their
clients are “Asian”. The explanation provided by the journalist is that migrants have
high aspirations and work hard to achieve these.
In 2010 newspapers ran articles with the following headings “Segregation in the
school system” (Patty 2010) and “Top school’s secret weapon: 95 % of students of
migrant heritage” (Patty and Stevenson 2010). In these articles journalists assure us
that this was not a debate about biology or race, nor one about who deserves to
attend high performing government schools. This is about “a clash of cultural atti-
tudes about the purpose of schooling” (Patty 2010).
In 2011 there were press reports (Milburn 2011) on research conducted by Ho
(2011) that made a link between the visibility of Chinese and Indian students at high
performing government schools to “white flight”. Ho argues that most students at
select entry government schools are from China and India and other Asian back-
grounds. Ninety-three per cent of students at Mac.Roberston Girls School and 88 %
of boys at Melbourne High School are described as having a language background
other than English and are “mostly Asian”. Similar figures are given for Sydney.
These high percentages are contrasted to the fact that only 8 % of the Australian
population “speak an Asian language at home”. Drawing on Ho’s research the
newspaper article states that the sheer number of “Asian” students makes these
schools unattractive to other parents. Ho (2011) is quoted as stating;
The ‘white flight’ from these schools must partly reflect an unwillingness to send children
to schools dominated by migrant-background children, which simply further entrenches
this domination.
The Principal of Melbourne High School, Mr Ludowyke is quoted as affirming

the diversity at his school. He comments;
Melbourne High and Mac.Rob have played a pivotal role in providing opportunities for
newly arrived migrant communities. They’re part of the success story of multiculturalism in
Melbourne. (quoted in Milburn 2011).
8.5 “Tiger Mothers” and the Need to Be Human
In these articles attention is drawn to the clash between what parents want for the
children and how they understand the role of education. There is concern that overly
ambitious parents drive their children to such extremes that the bar has been raised
beyond the grasp of other students who wish to live well-balanced lives. This image
126 G. Tsolidis
of Asian students as over-zealous has been fed most recently by the publicity given
to the notion of the “Tiger Mother” after the publication of Chua’s book (2011).
In 2011 The Australian newspaper published an article titled, “Tiger mums not good
for human children” (Soutphommasane 2011). This drew on a Chua’s book explaining
the difference between western and Chinese or Tiger mothers. Tiger mothers disci-
pline their children, which results in their high achievements. This discipline is rep-
resented as “tough love” and good academic results are the product. Soutphommasane
(2011) states;
In any case, excellence shouldn’t be understood crudely in terms of the rote learning of
musical pieces and university entrance scores. It matters that we should nurture a love of
knowledge (or music) for its own sake. It matters that we should equip children to express
their individuality.
The view that “Asian” students are driven to excel academically at the expense of
being “human” is promulgated in most of the newspaper articles referred to here.
With reference to select-entry and high performing government schooling, the argu-
ment is that a high percentage of students with these values threaten the culture of a
school premised on the virtues of an all-rounded liberal education. This has been
made evident by the introduction of a range of measures at Melbourne High School
intended to mitigate against the idea that good marks are all that matter. According
to the Principal these measures are designed to challenge the image of his school as
a “hot-house for swots” and to address “a problem with parents pressuring their sons
to drop out of sport and other co-curricular activities to focus on study” (Milburn
2010). The school has also relaxed entry requirements, admitting some students on
the basis of strong performance in areas such as sport or community service at the
Year 10 level. The Principal stated that he was trying to convince parents that stu-
dents’ involvement in a range of activities enhanced their academic performance.
This newspaper commentary on high performing government schools and “Asian”
students raises several important issues. The form of “white flight” referred to is not
linked to the perception that minority students will lower academic standards. On the
contrary these students are considered to be academically successful to the point
where the nature of what is constructed as a desirable school ethos is jeopardised. So
much so, that some parents are choosing to pay much higher fees so that their chil-
dren can attend elite independent schools instead. The desired school ethos is linked
to forms of liberalism that stress the importance of cultivating the whole person so
that they can be active citizens (Nussbaum 1997). In an ideal sense, liberal education
aims to be holistic, catering for academic, social, physical and cultural development.
A school with a good ethos will provide opportunities for students to excel in sports,
debating, theatre and music for example, as well as support them through their aca-
demic studies. Within this type of education, the aim is to produce good citizens.
Active citizenship assumes that individuals can be independent, critical and creative
thinkers who can collaborate as well as be self-motivated.
So-called Asian students are represented as driven towards academic excellence,
including by overly ambitious parents, to the exclusion of other activities. They are
more comfortable with swatting than with playing football and they are drawn to
forms of learning that emphasise regurgitation rather than analysis and critique.
These stereotypes are somewhat intimated by the principal of Melbourne High
School, who is at pains to explain how his school is challenging students to broaden
their curricula and explaining to parents how a wider range of activities enhances
academic success. Principals are often caught between the paradox of maintaining
a school’s reputation for academic excellence and providing forms of education
linked to liberalism, which are desired by many parents. By making a strategic link
between co-curricula activities and academic prowess this school principal may be
killing two birds with one stone.
The importance of being human is expounded by Soutphommasane (2011) dis-
cussed above. Nussbaum (1997) distinguishes between a liberal and humanist edu-
cation and links the latter to a capacity to function as a global rather than national
citizen. The aim of preparing students for global citizenship is one that makes stark
the contradictions within liberalism. Most particularly, it fails to link liberal ideals
to the unequal power relations that determine what is good citizenship and who
decides (Tsolidis 2002). The chimera of “fair play” that underpins liberalism is less
opaque at the global level than it is at the national level.
8.6 How White Is the Working Class?
Commentators in the press discussed above, draw attention to segregation and its
possible impact on our society. There is some agreement that students are distrib-
uted amongst schools in ways that are creating ethic segmentation. This dovetails
with class, although commonly there is scant reference to the two issues in tandem.
One article however, contained the following statement;
The co-director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University,
Bob Birrell, said the successful students largely represented middle- to upper-middle-class
families from Asia who put a heavy emphasis on education and professional achievement.
He said selective schools were not providing assistance to the vast majority of families. ‘In
NSW we are entrenching advantage within one particular ethnic group. If the NSW govern-
ment was serious about equal opportunity, it would put some geographical boundaries to
ensure better access to [top] schools’. (Patty and Stevenson 2010).
Birrell’s comment taps a familiar refrain that draws attention to the relationship
between academic success, ethnicity and class. In Australia there is a commonsense
constitution of the “working class” as white. This is juxtaposed, to “middle class”
rather than “upper class” because Australians, including the very wealthy, allude to
some sense of egalitarianism. “Working class” and “migrant” or “ethnic” are often
used to denote separate categories despite the fact that historically, the massive post-
World War II migration programme—that changed the demography of the nation—
was prompted by the need for an industrial workforce. “White” is a shifting signifier
and does not necessarily take its meaning from a specific phenotypical characteris-
tic. Instead it is marked in relation to “Australian”, constituted at a particular junc-
ture: for example, after World War II southern European immigrants were marked
128 G. Tsolidis
as not quite white because they were the most distinct from the Anglo-Celtic majority
at the time. As the so-called white Australia policy relaxed, the constitution of
“non-white” too shifted (see Chaps. 11 and 12).
In Australia, the trade union movement and the political left (both aligned with
working class identity) have a history of opposition or ambivalence towards migra-
tion and minorities. Historically this has been linked to concerns about an expanded
industrial workforce with limited experience of unionism and the likely impact of
this on wages. This ambivalence was played out through the Labor Government
stance vis-à-vis asylum seekers. The Labor Government’s rhetoric, policies and
practice are at least as draconian as those advocated by its conservative opposition.
By contrast it has been a vocal but small group of “wet” Liberal Party politicians
who have advocated most strongly on behalf of asylum seekers (Georgiou 2011).
This failure of the left to come to terms with race/ethnicity has been argued more
generally as a failure to critique neoliberalism from outside “the fog of white iden-
tity” (Allen 2001).
Symbolic whiteness works between categories of class. Gillborn (2010) argues
that white supremacy relies on the discursive construction of the white working
class as disadvantaged. He builds his case using Critical Race Theory and the under-
standing that factors such as class, race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality intersect to
produce what he refers to as shifting interest-convergences. Because of this, such
factors need to be read against each other in the context of dominant discourses at
any given time. Gillborn states;
The most high profile and persistent discourse currently surrounding race and education in
contemporary Britain projects the image of White working class children as victims of
ethnic diversity. (2010: 8)
He attributes this to a range of issues including the suspicion surrounding multi-

culturalism and the sense that the race equality agenda has gone too far and, as a
result, poor white students, particularly boys, have become victims. He concludes
that the white working class is a beneficiary of whiteness, even if at times, it remains
not “quite white”, that is, on the periphery of the most powerful groups.
While race in Britain and Australia may be represented differently, some of the
same issues remain relevant. In Australia whiteness has been given meaning through
the brutal colonisation of indigenous peoples. Additionally immigration policies
have been used to keep Australia white (see Chaps. 12 and 13), exercised most dili-
gently in relation to the “yellow peril”. The infamous phrase, attributed to Caldwell,
the first Minister of Immigration; “Two wongs don’t make a white” provides another
dimension to not being quite white (Tsolidis 2001). Nonetheless, the issues identified
by Gillborn in relation to the UK resonate within the Australian context where there
has been a backlash against multiculturalism, the strident re-inscription of nation,
including through education policy, and the pitting of “real” Australians against an
ethnicised Other. These trends were made most obvious during the Cronulla riots
(see Chap. 10) and the ensuing discourses of expulsion (Tsolidis 2010).
Debates about the types of students who access highly sought after places in high
performing government schools need to be seen in this context. This is a competition
for limited and extremely valuable resources. A place at a high performing government
school is likely to set up a student for life and comes with a much lower price tag
than that required at elite independent schools. Marking students who compete
successfully for such places as “Asian” is differentiating them from Australians,
particularly the “battlers” (white working class) for whom the country is seen as
gradually becoming less lucky. “Fair go” is an important element of current educa-
tion policy. It represents the possibility that schooling can act as a social leveller—a
claim that sits at the heart of debates about school choice and the role of government
schooling more generally (see, for example, Chap. 7). The argument is made that all
students are entitled to good schooling and it is public transparency through the My
School website that will provide the catalyst for change. In a market system it is the
“consumer of education” who has the responsibility to choose, thus the onus shifts
to students and their families because it is up to them to choose wisely. In this envi-
ronment, there is no such thing as an “ordinary” school (Maguire et al. 2011). To be
successful in the market, schools must represent themselves as being desirable.
And while academic success is a critical criterion, other factors come into play.
The ethnic make-up of the school population is one such factor (Ho 2011). There
is a precarious balance between enrolling minority students, perceived as being
good for academic results, and keeping the culture of the school comfortable for
those whose priority is a sense of whiteness.
8.7 How White Is Our Social Imaginary?
Recently I was sent an email joke that was originally titled “First day at school in
Birmingham”. It was circulated to me as “First day at school in Coburg”. Coburg is
a suburb north of the Melbourne Central Business District, known for its large
Middle Eastern population. The joke involves a teacher reading the roll that includes
names such as Achmed El Kabul and Abdul Alu Ohimi. The teacher then reads out
Mi Cha El Mey Er, which is greeted with silence. The punch line is the response
from a student named Michael Meyer who didn’t recognise that his name had been
read out.
Hage (1998) argues that Australia is imagined as white and that this imaginary is
critical to the construction of a hierarchy that determines some members of our
society more valuable than others. He describes as least desirable those who conjure
a sense of the third world. It is these “third world looking” people who are treated
with suspicion and given the least respect. This being more the case in times when
there is a so-called war against terror that places Muslims, or those assumed to be
Muslim, in the most vulnerable position (see Chap. 5). Hage argues that there is a
particular type of cultural capital that if accumulated, makes individuals and com-
munities less “third world looking”. This symbolic whiteness can be accumulated
by virtue of birth, for example being Christian rather than Muslim Lebanese, or it
can be accumulated through factors such as wealth, a willingness to assimilate or
through education.
130 G. Tsolidis
Marketisation, school choice and social justice intersect with ethnicity and the
accumulation or perceived diminution of symbolic whiteness. One dimension of
this process relates to the accumulation of symbolic whiteness; becoming educated
as a means of upward social mobility, including for (racialised) minorities. Another
dimension is one that threatens a sense of whiteness because your child is “the only
blonde in the schoolyard” or the teacher no longer pronounces Michael Meyer in a
familiar way.
Schooling is instrumental in feeding the social imaginary. There is a complex
relationship between schooling, community and ethnicity, evoked through the anec-
dote about the blonde child and the playground described at the beginning of the
paper and the circulated email described above. This relationship, however, becomes
more complex in relation to high performing government schools. In this context,
some “third world looking” students are more valuable than others because they
have a reputation for having strong aspirations, and look to achieve these through
education and being studious enough to gain the academic results required. It is
these students who are both sought after because they contribute to an academic
culture of success—particularly in government schools where academic segregation
is more pronounced—and simultaneously condemned for taking over such schools
and altering their culture. They do not leave enough room for “Aussies” who have
more realistic aspirations and holistic views about what constitutes a good educa-
tion. The complex relationship between class and race/ethnicity needs to be consid-
ered when schooling is explored particularly given its role in reflecting and shaping
the social imaginary of Australianness. At what point do so-called “Asians” come to
be considered as Australian?
8.8 Conclusion
Foucault describes heterotopian spaces as those capable of juxtaposing several

incompatible sites in the same place. I have argued that government schooling can
function as a heterotopian space because at one end, there is the desire to create
opportunity, so that all students can access a university education regardless of their
background. At the other extreme there is a desire to impose order onto chaos
through accountability and transparency measures so that parents can select a school
for their children on sound criteria and in so doing exert pressure on so-called under-
performing schools to change. Foucault argues that the mirror sits between utopias
and heterotopias. The mirror is a “placeless place” because it is simultaneously real
and illusionary. We can hold a mirror and look into it because it is real. Yet, it also
creates an illusion by allowing ourselves to see ourselves somewhere where we are
not. I have argued that it is the My School website which acts as the mirror, the
“placeless place” that sits between heterotopias and utopias. In relation to govern-
ment schooling it captures the utopian desire of providing all students with an
opportunity to enter university, while also functioning to impose order over chaos.
Rather than offer transparency that enables parents to make real choices, the My
School website contributes to a form of residualisation within the government

system by consolidating the segregation between “good” and “bad” schools. Some
government schools are high performing, either because they are formally select-
entry schools or because they use less formal means to “cream” the students per-
ceived to have the most academic potential. This process of concentrating students
understood to enhance a school’s test results is ethnicised; with some minorities
deemed to be a good investment, for example “Asian” students.
Once the proportion of “Asian” students rises to a particular level, however, their
presence is seen as altering the culture of the school, inhibiting its capacity to attract
other families. Nominally this is linked to the idea that “Asian” students work
against a school’s capacity to offer a well-rounded liberal education. Arguably
“white flight” or not wanting your child to be the “only blonde in the playground”
is linked to racialised discourses that present the “tiger mother” and her “dragon
children” as somewhat less than human. This is a form of racism that distinguishes
on the basis of success rather than failure. The fear that students will contribute to
standards falling because English is not their mother tongue, or because their par-
ents are not well educated has been replaced with a fear that success achieved
through a form of driven hard work is altering a desirable school ethos. This is a
“neurotic imaginary” that works to “dehumanise ‘Asians’ and makes them appear as
if they are superhuman” (Hage 1998: 221). As the momentum towards segregation
continues to gather speed, we need to consider the cost of not sharing school spaces
and how students who no longer study together are going to live and work together
as adults. One of the issues that must be addressed is the racist discourses promul-
gated, including through the press, about the Asians who are represented perpetu-
ally as Other. There is a particular need to consider how we are educating all students
for a globalised world and whether aspirations to particular forms of liberal educa-
tion are adequate and meaningful in this context.
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Chapter 9
A Multicultural Italy?
Riccardo Armillei
Abstract This chapter discusses the approach the Italian Government is taking to
cope with an increasingly diverse population. It focuses particularly on the circum-
stances of the Romani communities in the sphere of education and social justice,
but also deals with marginalised migrant communities. Based on fieldwork con-
ducted in Rome between 2011 and 2012, and an analysis of relevant secondary
sources, this chapter draws attention to the educational system and its capacity to
deal with ethnic and cultural diversity. Analysis of the via Italiana (the “Italian
way”) of promoting intercultural education enables an appraisal of current ethno-
centric and assimilative policies, together with related social inclusion strategies.
The position of the Romani peoples, in particular, functions as a magnifying glass
with which it is possible to analyse Italy’s overall approach towards cultural diver-
sity. The discourse on ‘interculture’ in Italy is also placed in the broader context of
the ongoing international debate about the “multiculturalism” versus “intercultur-
alism” paradigm.
Keywords Multiculturalism • Migration • Institutional racism • Interculturalism •

Intercultural education • Italy • Romani peoples
9.1 The Italian Context: Between Interculturalism

and Monoculturalism
For many years Italy was as a country of emigration; only in the last few decades did
we see an inversion of this trend. Since the 1970s Italy has moved from being a net
exporter of migrants to a net importer (Bonifazi et al. 2009). As Britain, West
Germany and France closed their frontiers to immigration in the 1980s, Italy became
a transit country (Myors et al. 2008). Each year Italy continued to grow as a global
destination for migrants and today it counts among the European countries with the
R. Armillei (*)
The Alfred Deakin Research Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation,
Deakin University, Burwood, Australia
e-mail: r.armillei@deakin.edu.au

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16003-0_9
136 R. Armillei
highest volume of immigrants on its territory. In January 2011, there were around
five million immigrants in Italy, amounting to 7.5 % of the national population
(Istituto Nazionale di Statistica [ISTAT] 2011). At the same time an influx of illegal
immigration has also developed (Rocchia and Scassiano 2008). Despite this situation
“Italian law and policy in the area of immigration are still struggling to catch up with
this phenomenon” (Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions [COHRE] et al. 2008: 11).
The multicultural paradigm that developed in many parts of Europe in the 1970s
has never taken root in Italy. At the beginning of the 1990s, instead, a lively debate
on intercultural issues started to emerge. The growing presence of foreign students
had prompted the Government to introduce a new paradigm, particularly within the
Italian educational system. In 1995 the Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Universita’ e
della Ricerca (Ministry of Education, Universities and Research [MIUR] 1995: 109)
issued a document, the Circolare Ministeriale (Ministerial Memo No. 205/90),
which for the first time introduced the concept of “intercultural education” (see
Chap. 7 on conceptions of “multicultural education”), with the following definition:
The primary goal of intercultural education is the promotion of a constructive coexistence
within a composite cultural and social framework. Not only does it entail acceptance and
respect of the other, it also promotes the recognition of cultural diversity while encouraging
dialogue, mutual understanding and mutual transformation.
In 2007, Italy even claimed its own model of cultural diversity: La Via Italiana
per la Scuola Interculturale e l’Integrazione degli Alunni Stranieri (“The Italian
way to intercultural schooling and the integration of foreign students”).
According to this document issued by the MIUR (2007: 8–9), the Italian school
system is guided by four main principles: (1) Universalism: in accordance with the
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child ratified by the Government in
1991, education is promoted as the fundamental right of every child; (2) Communal
schooling: all students are enrolled in “normal classes”, thus avoiding the creation
of “special or separate classes” for foreigners; (3) Centrality of the individual in
relation to the “other”: the educational project places particular attention on the
uniqueness of each student; (4) Interculturalism: in adopting an intercultural per-
spective, diversity in all its forms is considered a paradigm of school identity. The
Italian intercultural model is based on a “dynamic conception of culture” which
acknowledges ‘cultural relativism’ while promoting social cohesion and the build-
ing of common values.
Yet, despite the theoretical push, “both the media and policy reports suggest, if
not affirm, that Italy is struggling with the overall social inclusion project”
(McSweeney 2011: 4). On top of that, “interculturalism” has gradually become a
vague general term, used to define a vast range of initiatives, all differing in their
motivations, intentions and results. There is now an established intercultural rheto-
ric, which is used in many projects that define themselves as “intercultural” but too
often employ the terminology uncritically (Interculture Map 2006, para. 3). In par-
ticular, the situation of the Romani peoples in Italy provides a clear example of the
failure of this approach. The fact that these communities have not yet been recog-
nised as a minoranza storico-linguistica (“historico-linguistic minority”)—like
9 A Multicultural Italy? 137
numerous other well-established ethnic groups—a status that would have enhanced
and protected their language and culture, represents one of the main contradictions
in the implementation of genuine intercultural practice.
In addition, public institutions still tend to categorise the Romani peoples as
“nomads” or unsettled immigrants, although most are Italian citizens. The research
conducted with Romani communities in Italy reveals the limits of interculturalism
(in theoretical detail and practical application alike) and the associated underlying
schemes aimed at their assimilation. The Government’s avowed commitment to
guaranteeing all ethnic groups equal treatment failed to champion the presence of
this vulnerable minority and its unique culture. Besides that, immigration is still
treated by the Government as a socioeconomic “emergency” rather than a structural
phenomenon with potential cultural and economic advantages (Intercultural
Dialogue 2007). Romani peoples, and immigrants more generally, have effectively
been expected to assimilate and conform to the dominant culture.
Intercultural discourse in Italy, therefore, is founded on very shaky grounds.
Despite evidence of increasing cultural and religious diversity, Italy can hardly be
defined as a multicultural society; particularly since multiculturalism is a concept
that has always been absent from Italian public policy and discourse. In fact, as
argued by Allievi (2010: 85), Italy should be rather considered “a monocultural and
monoreligious (Roman Catholic) country”. Interculturalism is still predominantly
theoretical in character and not supported officially, in the sense of being incorpo-
rated into the nation’s history. Furthermore, a major issue in Italy has been the
absence of a coherent social inclusion policy across the board. The prevailing trend
is merely to devise policies that promote a balance between the preservation of
national identity and a vague idea of social integration.
9.2 The Emergence of the Intercultural Paradigm in Europe
Particularly after the economic “miracle” of the 1950s in Europe, a lively discussion
on topics related to linguistic problems in schools started to emerge. This was cer-
tainly more prominent in countries where the immigration flows had been higher,
such as France, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands. Later, starting from the
1970s, the first experiments of a so called “pedagogy for foreigners” were intro-
duced. This represented a new subject which over time became target of strong criti-
cism mainly because of its “assimilatory/compensatory” approach. Only in the
1980s, though, the “theoretical considerations and practical intervention strategies
with respect to intercultural pedagogy slowly began to form” (Portera 2008: 483).
Europe was becoming increasingly diverse.
The internal building of the European Union, as an economic and political
alliance, had initially favoured a gradual process of liberalization of goods, capital
and services. But gradually and over time it had also enhanced the free movement
of people from different member states, and consequently engendered more inter-
cultural contact as well. These intercultural encounters—sometimes collisions, as
138 R. Armillei
described by Huntington in his controversial book The Clash of Civilizations and

the Remaking of the World Order (1996) (see also Chap. 2 in this volume)—have
then turned into every day and tangible socio-cultural phenomena. For instance,
according to a recent survey conducted in 2007 by The Gallup Organization, com-
missioned by the European Commission DG Education and Culture, “two-thirds
(65 %) of respondents in the 27 EU Member States were able to recall some interactions
with at least one person either of a different religion, ethnic background or national-
ity (either EU or non-EU) than their own” (The Gallup Organization 2007: 4).
Such increased intercultural contacts prompted the EU member states to start
investing in some cross-cultural paradigms, many of which have recently been
declared a failure (Emmett Tyrrell 2011). Moving away from these unsuccessful
‘cross-cultural’ approaches, EU member states began to pursue and implement the
concept of interculturalism, which emphasises “the idea of a fruitful exchange
between different cultural groups that will enrich the whole society” (European
Commission 2009: 3). Taking account of European cultural diversity became par-
ticularly important after the 9/11 terrorist attack. In fact, during the following
3 years (2002–2004) the Secretary General of the Council launched an integrated
project, titled Responses to Violence in Everyday Life in a Democratic Society,
which aims “to help decision makers and others to implement consistent policies of
awareness-raising, prevention and law enforcement to combat violence in everyday
life” (Bourquin 2003: 3). In this context, Violence, Conflict and Intercultural
Dialogue was “the fifth in a series of publications designed to acquaint the reader
with recommendations or instruments used to launch Council of Europe (COE)
activities and projects on violence prevention”.
The intercultural approach not only aimed to support a strategy of recognition
and respect for human diversity, as implied by multicultural theory, but it also pre-
sented “an interpretation of cohabitation that valorises positive dynamics of
exchange and redefines the notion of identity” (Pompeo 2002: 134). This new strat-
egy was also committed to the creation of the best conditions for the “other” to fully
develop its own subjectivity. Furthermore, it did not focus only on the foreigners but
also on the locals, thus leading to a logica dei rapporti (“logic of relations”) which,
even if it did not eliminate social conflict, it enhanced cultural exchanges and bor-
rowings (Susi 1995: 31).
According to a recent document issued by the COE (2011, para. 1),
rather than ignoring diversity (as with guest-worker approaches), denying diversity (as with
assimilationist approaches) or overemphasising diversity and thereby reinforcing walls
between culturally distinct groups (as with multiculturalism), interculturalism is about
explicitly recognising the value of diversity while doing everything possible to increase
interaction, mixing and hybridisation between cultural communities.
The challenge proposed by the intercultural approach marked an epochal shift.

Multiculturalism simply promoted the pure coexistence of multiple cultures
(Pompeo 2002), whereby people were basically allowed to keep their own values but
risked marginalisation and ghettoisation as a result of the “ethnic mosaic” dynamic
embedded in multicultural theories (Bissoondath 2002). Interculturalism, instead,
endorsed a perspective aimed at facilitating genuine cross-cultural communication,

developing the ability to interact with others in dialogue and conflict resolution, in
the reciprocal, positive and constructive management of diversity.
This new approach is now playing an important role in fostering a new European
identity and citizenship (Vidmar-Horvat 2012). The year 2008 was even proclaimed
European Year of Intercultural Dialogue by the European Parliament and the mem-
ber States of the European Union (EU), with the aim of developing a deeper under-
standing of diverse perspectives and practices and of increasing socio-political
participation and equality. During the same year the White Paper on Intercultural
Dialogue was launched by the Council of Europe Ministers of Foreign Affairs,
arguing that interculturalism should be the preferred model for managing cultural
diversity in Europe. Multiculturalism, a policy that was now defined as “inadequate”
was thus replaced by this “work in progress and work of many hands” approach
(COE 2008). As Kymlicka (2012) noticed, the new intercultural trend was also
welcomed by the UNESCO in its 2008 “World Report on Cultural Diversity”, which
somehow signed the beginning of a more global consensus.
9.3 “Multiculturalism” Versus “Interculturalism”
In recent years a heated debate has developed around the concepts of “multicul-
turalism” and “interculturalism”. Particularly, scholars from émigré societies such
as Canada and the UK (e.g. Kymlicka 2012; Meer and Modood 2012; Taylor
2013), are now trying to analyse and compare the two approaches at times imply-
ing a distinction between a “bad multiculturalism” and a “good interculturalism”
(Kymlicka 2012: 211). Drawing on the analysis of Meer and Modood’s (2012)
work, which at the present recognizes multiculturalism as a better political orien-
tation to cultural diversity, Kymlicka (2012) explains that there is “very little intel-
lectual substance” underlying the trend to approach interculturalism, as a new,
innovative, realistic approach, compared to a supposedly tired, discredited, naive
“multiculturalism”.
Contrasting the claims in the 2008 EU “White Paper” regarding post-war Western
Europe embracing relativist and segregationist multiculturalism, Kymlicka suggests
that “interculturalism” was basically introduced “as a remedy for failed multicultur-
alism” (2012: 213). While multiculturalism is now “offered up as a sacrificial lamb,
a handy scapegoat for popular discontent” (2012: 214), he argues, interculturalism
could be better described as a form of “political rhetoric/theatre”. The main purpose
of this shift from multiculturalism to interculturalism was just a way to create and
establish a new narrative/myth. Another Canadian scholar, Charles Taylor (2013: 2),
seems to reinforce perfectly Kymlicka’s viewpoints. As Taylor puts it, in fact,
[…] the European attack on “multiculturalism” often seems to us a classic case of false
consciousness, blaming certain phenomena of ghettoization and alienation of immigrants
140 R. Armillei
on a foreign ideology, instead of recognizing the home-grown failures to promote integra-

tion and combat discrimination. (2013: 2)
According to Taylor, the current anti-multicultural rhetoric in Europe would

reflect “a profound misunderstanding of the dynamics of immigration into the rich,
liberal democracies of the West” (2013: 2). Taylor explains that although initially
immigrants tend to create networks with people of similar origins and background
in order to adapt to the new environment, their major motivation is to find new
opportunities. It is only when their hopes for integration are frustrated that a sense
of alienation and hostility to the receiving society can grow. It is thus a failure of the
host society to implement multicultural policies which would radicalise certain seg-
ments of immigrant communities. As a matter of fact, Kymlicka (2012: 214) argues,
[…] the evidence suggests that popular discontent with immigrants is in fact higher in
countries that didn’t embrace multiculturalism, and there’s no evidence that adopting mul-
ticulturalism policies causes or exacerbates anti-immigrant or anti-minority attitudes.
What seems to emerge from the analysis of the work of these scholars has a two-
fold implication. On the one hand, claims regarding the superiority of intercultural-
ism over multiculturalism cannot be proven theoretically or empirically. On the
other, interculturalism does not yet offer a “distinct perspective”. As a consequence,
“at present, interculturalism cannot, intellectually at least, eclipse multiculturalism,
and so should be considered as complementary to multiculturalism” (Meer and
Modood 2012).
Although the standpoints expressed by the supporters of multiculturalism can be
quite understandable,—especially in the light of the Western European failure in
implementing “real” multiculturalism—the discourse made by Kymlicka, Meer,
Madood and Taylor refers to a very specific context which at the moment seems to
be extremely sensitive to the topic. There is, in fact, an ongoing ideological battle
between “multicultural (Anglophone) Canada”, which represents the majority of
the population, and prevalent “intercultural (Francophone) Québec” (see also
Chap. 4). This open confrontation has a long history of separatist movements behind
it. The largely French-speaking province of Québec has been openly aspiring to
independence for decades. The sovereignty question promoted by Quebeckers can
thus account for why interculturalism has been chosen over multiculturalism. Taylor
(2013: 5) suggests, “multiculturalism could never take in Quebec” and finds highly
understandable a call for interculturalism instead. At the same time, though, he also
stresses the fact that there are no real differences between the intercultural and mul-
ticultural approaches.
Despite the fact multiculturalism seems to be described here as the right approach
to follow, the Canadian case is not free from internal criticism. For instance, Muslim
Canadian Congress founder, Tarek Fatah (in Davidson 2011: para. 3), on the subject
of the 2006 Toronto 18 terrorist plot, argues that “Canada has been too tolerant in
allowing Muslim immigrants to settle into closed communities, some of which
preach Islamic values and a hatred toward the West”. Wong (2010) refers to the
non-acceptance of multiculturalism by a consistent part of mainstream Canadian
society. Other problems, often associated with multiculturalism, such as the devel-
opment of ethnic enclaves, and the correlated risk of creating a mere mosaic of
cultures rather than practical were also reported in a number of studies (e.g. Kunz
and Sykes 2007; Qadeer 2003; Preston and Lo 2009). In 2003 Fawcett (ii) even
claimed that instead of working towards equality for all individuals, multiculturalism
in Canada was devoting itself to “a subtle form of cultural gerrymandering”.
But the Canadian model is not the only “successful” multicultural paradigm to
face criticism today. Australia, also considered one of the forefathers of multicul-
tural policies in the 1970s, has been experiencing a series of ups and downs over the
years. Particularly it faced its darkest time during the “Howard era” (see Chap. 10 on
this period in Australian multicultural politics). For more than a decade, during the
conservative Howard government (1996–2007) era, “the idea that Australia is a mul-
ticultural society has disappeared completely, leaving a bare recognition of cultural
diversity as a demographic fact, rather than any sense of a multicultural policy
framework” (Jakubowicz 2009: 9). Hage (2000: 18) arguing that Australian multi-
culturalism has a “white-centric” past and an assimilationist present, coined the defi-
nition of “White Multiculturalism”, where the dominant culture plays a central role
in mixing the migrant cultures, which are depicted as mere voiceless ingredients. In
other words, just like the previous “white Australia”, “multicultural Australia” has
also been the result of a top-down political action, driven by the desire to assimilate
European immigrants within the dominant culture (Tilbury 2007) (see also Chap. 8
on the historical contingencies of multiculturalism in Australia).
9.4 The Negative Representation of Migrants in Italy
Concern at the media’s role in disseminating “ideas of racial superiority or incite-

ment to racial hatred” (Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
2012: 5) was particularly high after the national elections of 2008 when a right-wing
coalition led by Berlusconi capitalised on fears about immigrants and public safety
concerns to win elections (Sciortino 2010). Since then, despite its obligations under
international human rights law, the Italian government kept reinforcing discrimina-
tory measures against immigrants, which became a security issue for the nation
(Chiarini 2011). A moral panic-oriented approach was particularly visible with
regards to the arrival of “boat people” from North Africa which stimulated alarmism
among Italians with fears of an immigrant invasion. The migration cooperation
announced with Libya in May 2009 is a clear example of the government’s willing-
ness to set aside human rights to advance populist anti-migrant policies. The intro-
duction of a “pushback” policy brought to a rapid decrease of asylum applicants, as
stated in a recent report by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2011:
9). Identification and expulsion procedures were also intensified.
In 2008 the Italian Government had also launched an extraordinary initiative, the
so-called Emergenza Nomadi (“Nomad Emergency”), to tackle a number of threat-
ening situations that had emerged among the Romani communities living in “nomad
camps”. As Amnesty International (2012: 6) noted, “high-profile crimes allegedly
142 R. Armillei
committed by people of Roma ethnicity from Romania [were] extensively reported in

the news, instigating aggressive anti-Roma rhetoric by local and national politicians”.
The Romani peoples’ presence came to be associated with crime and treated simply
as a security issue (on the racialization and criminalisation of minorities see also
Chap. 5). The 2007 EU enlargement had contributed to raise public fears of an
influx of immigrants from the new member States of Romania and Bulgaria (Sigona
2010). According to the European Network against Racism (2010), the ensuing
years saw a dramatic increase in the vulnerability of migrants to racism and
discrimination, a trend affecting all nationalities and ethnic groups.
As remarked by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights ([OHCHR] 2007: 23), “when crimes are committed by persons of foreign
origin or belonging to the Roma or Sinti communities, their nationality or ethnicity is
particularly emphasised”. The negative exposure of vulnerable minorities in the Italian
media is reinforced by the general tendency of journalists not to cover instances where
they are victims. This emerges from a 2008 survey by Sapienza University of Rome:
“Only 26 out of 5,684 television news stories about immigrants did not relate to crime
or security issues […] The media present a virtually one-dimensional image of immi-
grants in Italy” (Human Rights Watch [HRW] 2011: 11).
Recognizing the strategic role played by the media in shaping the way public opin-
ion perceive immigrants, and cultural diversity more in general, in 2007 the Ordine
Nazionale dei Giornalisti ([ODG] National Order of Journalists) and the Italian Press
Federation adopted a code of ethics, the Carta di Roma (“Charter of Rome”), in order
to improve the handling of issues relating to asylum-seekers, refugees, victims of
people trafficking and migrants (ODG 2007). European Commission against Racism
and Intolerance ([ECRI] 2012: 23) welcomed this initiative, noting that the Ufficio
Nazionale Antidiscriminazioni Razziali ([UNAR] National Office on Anti-Racial
Discriminations) had also set up a centre for monitoring the use of discriminatory
language in public discourse. But the media were not the only actors responsible for
inciting hostility against minorities. Concerns were also expressed over an increase in
racist and xenophobic rhetoric by certain politicians. Instead of taking a clear stand
against racial discrimination, they contributed decisively to stigmatising immigrants.
In 2009 another body, the Observatory on Xenophobia and Racism, was set up by the
Italian Parliament with the aim of combating racism and intolerance.
Despite such actions taken by Italian officialdom to tackle outbursts of racist
intolerance in public discourse, no penalties were introduced for these offences.
Besides the Carta di Roma, which only recently identified the Romani peoples as
“particularly vulnerable groups”, another code of conduct for journalists has existed
since 1993. Nevertheless, as argued by ECRI (2012), not only have these codes
never been systematically enforced, but journalists who breached them rarely
incurred penalties. There is little public awareness of the Observatory on Xenophobia
and Racism or its role. So far, few politicians have faced criminal prosecution for
xenophobic statements. As for UNAR itself, this body doesn’t observe the princi-
ples of independence and impartiality, either de jure or de facto. It is still not ade-
quately resourced or financially autonomous, and it is dependent on the Department
for Equal Opportunities of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers (ECRI 2012).
9.5 Interculturalism in the Italian Educational System
Education is a fundamental right as specified in the Italian Constitution. According

to Article 34 it should be available to all, compulsory and free for at least 8 years.
Schools should play a key role in creating thoughtful, caring and productive citi-
zens. The Professor of Social and Intercultural Pedagogy at Roma Tre University,
Massimiliano Fiorucci, argues that despite its limits the
Italian school system has been one of the main bastions of democracy, interculturalism and
citizenship in the past few years. School represented the only place everyone always had
access to. Too often, though, schools were asked to respond to situations that did not fall
directly under their mandate. Consequently, they could not always provide the most appro-
priate solutions. (Personal communication, 20 December 2011)
According to Naletto (2009: 249), the education system “plays a very strategic
role in the development of intercultural dynamics: it can help foster the elimination
of stereotypes, prejudices and racist behaviour”.
In the past two decades in particular, the MIUR started to pay specific attention
to the growing presence of foreign students within Italy’s educational system. The
first important measure fostering the inclusion of foreign pupils in the system was
Circolare No.301 of 1989. This memorandum, entitled “Inclusion of Foreign
Students in Compulsory Education: Promotion and Coordination of Initiatives in
Support of the Right to Education”, was aimed at improving Italian-language
knowledge and valorising the student’s native culture (Fiorucci 2011). A year later,
another significant document was issued—Circolare No.205, Compulsory School
and Foreign Students: The Intercultural Education—which contained additions to
Circolare No.301/89 (Rossi and De Angelis 2012). For the first time, intercultural
education was presented as a new methodology and a model for synthesising school
activities. Several other memoranda were later issued with the twofold aim of moni-
toring foreign students’ presence in the education system and bolstering the preven-
tion of racism in all its guises.
Circolare No.73/1994, entitled Intercultural Dialogue and Democratic
Coexistence: The Planning Commitment of the Schools, represented the first sys-
tematic effort to shape what would later become “The Italian way to Interculture”
(Rossi and De Angelis 2012: 9). This new approach was mainly the result of work
undertaken by the National Observatory for the Integration of Foreign Students and
Intercultural Education, which the MIUR set up in December 2006. In 2007 the
Observatory compiled a document which to this day constitutes the key work of
reference on the detail of school integration policy. The Italian Way to Intercultural
School and the Integration of Foreign Students was a very progressive publication.
By stressing a positive response to cultural diversity, this report highlighted a delib-
erate commitment to incorporate non-Italian pupils in ordinary schools, thus avoid-
ing the establishment of separate places of learning (UNAR 2012). Unfortunately,
as Fiorucci (2011: 193) argues, “a great part of this document is yet to be
implemented”.
With specific regard to the schooling of Romani children, inclusive approaches
had been in place since the 1950s. At that time, schoolteachers, acting mainly on a
144 R. Armillei
voluntary basis, initiated the first experiments in inclusivity within the system of
compulsory education (Rossi and De Angelis 2012). The first really systematic
schooling of Romanies began in 1965 with the creation of Lacio Drom (Good Trip)
courses. But, as Fiorucci (2011: 187) argues, these “special classes” ended up with
Romani children categorised as “special” and “different” (see Chap. 8 on ethicised
segregated school spaces). Only in 1982 were these classes abolished. In 1986 the
MIUR issued Circolare 207, officially extending compulsory schooling to all
Romani children (Rossi and De Angelis 2012). During the 1990s, in line with the
advent of intercultural education in the school system, legislative acts confirming
the right to an education started to favour the generic category “foreign students”,
which embraced the non-Italian Romanies. The intercultural paradigm became
increasingly important over the years and was a key element in several significant
initiatives at the European level (UNAR 2012). Despite this, Romanies continue to
be treated differently from other foreigners.
9.6 The Limits of “The Italian Way” to Intercultural

Education
In recent years a number of intercultural initiatives and projects have been launched
with the aim of entrenching educational inclusivity. Still, implementation of the
intercultural approach in the State’s education system has lacked institutional impe-
tus. A recent study of social inclusion practices within the Italian education system
noted that 90 % of initiatives were engineered by Third Sector associations (or “not-
for-profit” sector) in partnership with local authorities and schools (Gobbo et al.
2009). One result of this modus operandi was an intrinsic fragility. These actions
were generally “carried out on the basis of annual funding, without any continuity
or final evaluation of their efficacy” (Gobbo et al. 2009: 6). Only recently did local
authorities request final reports on the associations’ activities.
In the past two decades a number of legislative steps have been taken to guaran-
tee increasing autonomy for educational bodies. Probably the most important of
these are Law No.59 of 15 March 1997 apropos teaching and cultural pluralism, and
Presidential Decree No.275 of 8 March 1999 governing educational methods,
organisation, research and development (Gobbo et al. 2009). But the gap between
“declared principles and the actual availability of resources and teaching training
activities” (Caneva 2012: 36) undermined the prospects for managing change. The
freedom granted to schools implied that they had to finance their own projects and
their new educational functions. Unfortunately, though, “principals and teachers
have not always succeeded in securing the necessary resources” (Gobbo et al.
2009: 4). According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development ([OECD] 2011: 3), Italy remains among the members of the OECD
with the lowest investment in education as a percentage of GDP.
Scarce funds impacted on teaching quality. Although the body of law seemed
to be advanced, at least with respect to the principle of legitimising cultural diver-
sity, there were “still important loose ends to do with transition from the planning
and explanatory phase to that of practical implementation” (Rossi and De Angelis
2012: 41). Besides, the fact that the school system was the first institution to test
socially inclusive practices in its management of foreign students meant that
intercultural measures could only be introduced tentatively (Santerini 2006).
As Gobbo (2011: 15) observed, interculturalism was basically used only as a sort
of “palliative treatment”, not to create any stable and durable framework of inclu-
sion policies:
While the intercultural education discourse and the “good practices” aim to build a climate
of respect, dialogue and critical reflection on ethnocentric assumptions, classroom teaching
and learning are still often defined in terms of “problems” or “emergency” that teachers
have difficulty answering.
Further, the documents on interculturalism produced by the MIUR gave only

very general instructions and some basic principles, leaving the key task of imple-
menting them to schools and teachers. As a result,
[…] although theoretically teachers accept the [diversity] principle, they have difficulty in
appreciating and positively reinforcing students’ differences in their teaching programs, and
in managing some cultural and religious claims by immigrant families. They do not always
succeed in overcoming their ethnocentric approach and culturally constructed views.
(Caneva 2012: 34)
This particular aspect was also emphasised by Cortellesi (2009) in her contribu-
tion to the Libro Bianco sul Razzismo in Italia (White Book on Racism in Italy), she
concluded: “It was often the school initiatives and the teachers’ conduct which drew
attention to the ‘chronic differences’ of immigrant teenagers” (2009: 107). The pre-
cariousness of teaching quality in Italy was recently confirmed by Professor
Fiorucci,
[…] the teacher’s role is now considered low-grade, in a system where, by contrast with
other countries, there is no possibility for professional advancement. […] Most teachers,
except for the new ones, know nothing of pedagogy, didactic precepts, or how to work
cooperatively. (Personal communication, 20 December 2011)
Things have not changed much since 2000, when Marco Brazzoduro wrote an
article condemning the fact that teachers were generally left alone to face new
educational challenges (Brazzoduro 2000). Unsurprisingly, over the past decade
the schooling system lacked an evaluation process: “The assessment of scholarly
institutions was generally confined to inspections instigated by the Ministry of
Education. This activity, though, lacked any regularity” (Associazione TreeLLLe
2002: 36). It was not activated by the need to introduce regular testing of educa-
tional processes and outcomes (see Chap. 8 for a case-study look at the impacts of
institutional evaluations on ethnic segregation in the sector). A decade later, a
study released by the OECD (2011: 5) revealed that neither inspections nor evalu-
ations were carried out. The only reporting that schools are required to submit to
higher-ranking authorities is the “rapporto di conformità” (compliance certificate)
confirming that they are obeying the law and various procedures. In educational
practice, the “Italian way to interculture” was basically left to the discretion of
146 R. Armillei
each school and the keenest teachers. It remained more a declaration of intent than
a suite of policies (Santerini 2006).
9.7 Impressions from the Field
My research reveals entrenched disenchantment with intercultural practices over the

past decade in Rome. While the previous centre-left mayoral administration dis-
played some interest in championing cultural diversity, at least in theory, its succes-
sor—the right-wing Alemanno’s mayoralty—erased this topic from council’s
program. Yet, despite different rhetorical stances, actual policy remains consistent.
A representative from the Culture Office of XII Municipal Hall confirmed this
point:
At the moment the city council is not promoting any type of multicultural or intercultural
theory. The policy enacted by this administration is definitely no different from that carried
out by its predecessor. Both are based on the payment of millions of euro for forced evic-
tions, constantly shifting the problem from one place to another. This is the only real policy
on Romani culture. (Personal communication, 24 April 2012)
Interviews conducted by representatives of several NGOs operating in the

“nomad camps”, and involved in promoting inclusion projects within the school
system in Rome, offer an insight into the intercultural approach:
Today it makes no sense to talk about interculturalism. For instance, the previous
administration had launched the so-called menu etnici (ethnic menu) into school can-
teens. [Then Mayor of Rome Gianni] Alemanno replaced this with the “menu regio-
nale” (regional menu). Pasta all’ amatriciana was promoted as a mark of Roman
identity. […] Interculturalism is not on the political agenda: rather, it is a problem.
The Government finds it vexing that there are more foreign students in a class than
Italians. As a consequence, many a Bengali mother is not allowed to enrol her kids in
the neighbourhood school because it already has too many foreign children. They
have to go to another school much further away. (Ermes, personal communication, 3
May 2012)
A similar view was expressed by a social worker from the organisation Casa dei
Diritti Sociali (House of Social Justice):
Schools today basically consider foreign students a nuisance. In Italy the concept of inter-
culturalism vacillates between folklore, exoticism, disregard, denial and an approach that
merely tolerates the “Other”. Intercultural schooling is still at an embryonic stage in Italy.
(Personal communication, 20 December 2011)
The difficulties public authorities encounter in implementing an intercultural

approach also emerged from interviews with a representative of Rete Scuole
Migranti, a large network of Third Sector organisations funding L2s, schools of
Italian as a second language for immigrants:
The Italian Government’s inclusion policy is completely inefficient and contradictory. It
rests on a very inadequate normative framework. […] The “migrant flow” decree was a
failure. The State-run Employment Offices are extremely inefficient despite rampant
unemployment. There are no housing policies. Educational policy is also a failure: 30 per
cent of foreign kids fail compulsory school; 18–49 per cent are lagging behind; 16 per cent
drop out of the education system altogether. The new measure on linguistic integration
demands that immigrants know Italian in order to get a residence permit, but there are no
public funds for training courses. […] Italian-language schools, staffed by volunteers, were
launched in Rome in 1984–85; but the first institutional intervention was only in 1997! […]
As well as teaching Italian as an L2, we offer a wide range of socialising opportunities,
intercultural exchanges etc., but with very limited funds, and the spaces we use are also
inadequate. […] Can we really then speak of interculturalism in Italy? Systemically, the
answer is no; but there is certainly a sprinkling of qualified initiatives in this sector. (Email,
21 June 2012)
The State school system has not yet proved capable of giving Third Sector activi-
ties enough support and of ensuring courses in Italian are available to all immi-
grants, so how can they be expected to sustain their own languages and cultures, as
implied by intercultural theory?
By way of concluding this outline, an interview with a prominent Romani intel-
lectual provides a privileged insight into the intercultural issue:
Cultural recognition is surely important, but it represents only the final stage. Before we get
there, we really need to promote Romani self-determination. Many projects are initiated
today for our people. These are carried out by organisations which work for the Romani
peoples, but not with them. […] It is time to move from mediation to participation, from
multiculturalism to interculturalism. A multicultural society becomes intercultural when
there is active participation. […] We are at risk today of losing our culture and our identity.
If we do lose them, what are we going to cling to? We will be basically swallowed up by the
rest of society. My plea today is for cultural diversity, interculturalism, active participation,
intercultural democracy and recognition as a cultural minority. (Nazzareno Guarnieri, per-
sonal communication, 21 April 2012)
9.8 Concluding Observations
Despite its official adoption, the intercultural approach in Italy over the past few
decades has been vaguely conceived of and poorly executed (Fiorucci 2011; Gobbo
2011; Santerini 2006). Non-recognition of cultural diversity was plainly visible in
terms of not only the Romani communities but the broader immigrant population.
The school system and public institutions in general found it extremely difficult to
commit themselves deeply to a positive cultural diversity agenda. Paradoxically,
spending on the “camps policy” initiative, forced evictions and emergency measure
grew over the past two decades. Public funds are basically used to promote a “fake”
inclusion (Massimiliano Fiorucci, personal communication, December 20, 2011).
Continuous monitoring of available resources was also lacking. The Third Sector
emerged over time as an important agent to fill the gap and “patch things up”. But
the intervention of volunteer-based organisations relies on limited funding and
resources even if at times they managed to deliver a number of valuable intercultural
services in support of fringe communities. Perhaps their major effort and impact
was in the area of teaching Italian language as a second language, as opposed to
148 R. Armillei
promoting foreign languages and cultures. A monocultural and assimilationist

attitude still predominates in Italy, together with widespread racism against “Other”
communities.
In the past few decades growing scepticism has emerged in Europe at large with
regard to multiculturalism. This trend was observed in Italy as well as, although in
Italy’s case multicultural policies have never been implemented. Instead, intercultur-
alism was increasingly promoted as the most appropriate strategy for dealing with
cultural diversity. But the development of this new paradigm lacked a solid founda-
tion, nowhere more so than in relation to the Romani communities. In the past
decade, the Italian Government signed several international agreements and pro-
claimed its commitment to empowering these peoples.1 Yet, Romani communities,
and immigrants more generally, are still considered “security” issues and treated
solely through the application of extraordinary actions. Politicians refer to the idea
of national “insecurity” in order to convey a political willingness to pursue a more
‘muscular’ approach towards diversity and “Othered” communities. As predicted by
Agamben (1998), though, emergency measures lost their initial provisional charac-
ter and morphed into a “new permanent political category” (Sigona 2002).
In fact, even within the so-called intercultural paradigm, the associated princi-
ples and values such as positive and constructive management of diversity, dialogue
and conflict resolution, mutual learning, exchange and identity transformation, are
all absent from the nation’s socio-political arena. The plight of the Romani peoples
clearly underscores the weakness of the “Italian way” vis-à-vis cultural diversity.
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Part III
Performing Multicultural Belongings
Chapter 10
At Home/Out of Place: Young People’s
Multicultural Belongings
Anita Harris
Abstract What does it mean to come of age in an era of anti-multiculturalism?

How does such an environment shape the ways young people of diverse back-
grounds come to feel “at home”—in the nation, in the city, in their neighbourhoods,
and in their national identity? Discussing findings from a study of youth in the
multicultural suburbs of five Australian cities, this chapter explores how the politics
of belonging is lived through the spatial practices of everyday civic life for those
who have grown up during the multiculturalism backlash of the 1990s and 2000s. It
examines the contradictory picture that emerges of a new generation claiming a
right to multicultural citizenship and forging productive diversity within the urban
multiculture, and yet simultaneously positioned as “out of place” within civic life.
Keywords Belonging • Multiculturalism • Everyday multiculturalism •

Multicultural citizenship • Racism • Youth
Up to three quarters of the children of industrialised nations live in cities increas-

ingly subject to rapid global flows of peoples and cultures (Nilan and Feixa 2006).
Unlike previous generations, young people today now routinely encounter those of
different backgrounds in their everyday lives and must find ways to share civic
space and create new kinds of collective national and local identifications. But little
is known about their strategies for living well with difference and creating inclusive
forms of belonging, or about the conditions that militate against social cohesion and
active citizenship for young people of diverse backgrounds. How, and where, do
they develop a sense of belonging or connection to where they live? How do they
come to feel at home?
These questions about belonging are particularly germane to the experiences of
young people of immigrant or refugee background who have grown up in Australia
in the past 10–15 years. Young people are the most culturally diverse group in
Australia; they most frequently and routinely interact across difference, are most
comfortable dealing with a large range of cultural groups, and celebrate expanded
A. Harris (*)
School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
e-mail: Anita.Harris@monash.edu

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16003-0_10
156 A. Harris
notions of national identity (Ang et al. 2006). They are the inheritors of the
hard-fought “recognition and rights” multicultural politics of their parents’ genera-
tion and longstanding bipartisan implementation of robust multicultural policy. But
they have also come of age in a time of global and national political debates about
tighter regulation of immigration, border security and citizenship: a situation
described as “the multicultural backlash” (Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010). So even
while they may have a strong sense of entitlement to belong and sophisticated con-
ceptualizations of Australianness, they are attempting to operationalise these in a
political environment that has increasingly constructed them as outside the nation
and as objects for integration (Harris 2013). This chapter investigates precisely this
contradiction: how we might understand young people’s own capacity to feel at
home against efforts to position them as out of place. It first considers their experi-
ences of exclusionary practices in public places, and then explores the ways that
counter-claims of national belonging become possible through locally engendered
processes of inclusion and cohesion forged in the multicultural neighbourhood.
The chapter’s theoretical contribution is to scholarship extending analyses of
multicultural citizenship to encompass the everyday politics of belonging (Yuval
Davis 2006; Vasta 2013). It builds on the work of theorists who have argued for a
move in citizenship studies away from an exclusive focus on legal and formal status,
rights and civic knowledge towards a closer investigations of “routines, rituals,
norms and habits of the everyday through which subjects become citizens” (Isin
2008: 17). As Isin and Turner (2007: 16) argue, there is a need to examine everyday
acts of citizenship in the context of city spaces to understand exactly how and where
belonging is contested and produced. This chapter works within this frame by offer-
ing a focus on the everyday acts through which inclusion and recognition are negoti-
ated, and attention to the civic spaces where these processes are enacted.
10.1 Growing Up Under Schizoid Multiculturalisms
Australia is widely perceived as a multicultural success story. It is amongst the most

culturally diverse of the Western democracies, with a population comprising
approximately 46 % who are either overseas-born or have an overseas-born parent
(Australian Bureau of Statistics 2012), and growth is driven primarily by overseas
migration (Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2011). Multicultural policy
has had strong bipartisan support since the early 1970s, and Australia routinely
scores above all other rated nations on the Multiculturalism Policy Index (Banting
and Kymlicka 2013) (on this point see also Chap. 6). It is known as a country almost
entirely free of ethnic conflict and ghettoes, and large-scale longitudinal research
reveals high levels of popular support for multiculturalism and strong indicators of
social cohesion (Markus 2013) (see Chap. 13 for an extensive history of multicul-
tural governance in Australia, and Chap. 6 on its key policy dimensions).
Since the late 1990s however, there has also been a profound political shift away
from support for immigration and diversity and increasing concerns about threats to
10 At Home/Out of Place: Young People’s Multicultural Belongings 157
core values, social cohesion and border security. The “controllability” of difference
has become a matter of global political urgency (see Vasta 2010), and in Australia
this has become manifest through more stringent citizenship tests, immigration pro-
cesses and asylum seeker policy, reduction in funding for multicultural services,
new education programs for national values, and an ongoing public debate about the
negative effects of diversity on social cohesion and strong national identity (Tate 2009).
The latter has been framed as a return to a kind of integrationism (Poynting and
Mason 2008; Jupp 2009). As Turner (2007: 10) suggests, while previously “cultural
hybridity had received some level of assent as a defining feature of the Australian
national imaginary”, more recent times have seen a renewed account of the nation
as fundamentally grounded in white Anglo-Saxon stock and a set of associated
imagined core values. An integrationist agenda invokes the right of some to deter-
mine the inclusion of others according to their compatibility with this essentialised,
homogenous national character and its values (Poynting and Mason 2008).
A current generation of culturally diverse young people has come of age in this
rather contradictory environment. Those born or arriving in Australia from the
1990s onwards have faced an environment of considerable hostility towards immi-
grants and refugees, primarily framed as a struggle for control of the nation and its
core character and values. Such young people have had no lived experience of an era
before the retreat from multiculturalism and have grown up in an atmosphere of
enhanced entitlement on the part of some to determine the make-up of “their” nation
(Hage 2000). But while they may have less ready access to a discourse of hybridity
as legitimately Australian, they also experience an everyday environment of the
unremarkability of diversity and cohesion. In a practical sense their presence is
deeply embedded, simply as a result of Australia’s taken for granted immigration
history, the legacy of multicultural policy and the mundane reality of “unpanicked”
multiculturalism (Noble 2009) as experienced in daily Australian life. Drawing on
empirical research with young Australians of diverse backgrounds, this chapter con-
siders how these complexities play out in young people’s efforts to achieve belong-
ing, and suggests how an understanding of their experiences and practices can
contribute to theoretical debates about citizenship and the situated politics of
belonging.
10.2 About the Study
This chapter draws on research into young people’s strategies for intercultural liv-
ing, participation and cohesion in Australia’s most culturally diverse neighbour-
hoods in five Australian capital cities (Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and
Sydney). All of the neighbourhoods where the young people lived were originally
inhabited by Indigenous peoples and some maintained relatively large Indigenous
populations as well as a longstanding white Anglo community and a couple of
prominent post-war migrant communities (for example Italian or Greek). All had
been shaped by Asian settlement from the 1970s and Middle Eastern and Eastern
158 A. Harris
European migration in the 1990s. From 2008 several of the neighbourhoods had
had the greatest intake of any municipality in their state of settlers from the Horn of
Africa, South Asia and Afghanistan. Approximately one third to one half of the
residents were overseas-born in these neighbourhoods, and around half spoke lan-
guages other than English: figures that are significantly higher than the city aver-
ages around the time of data collection (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2008). The
neighbourhoods also tended to score high on the scale of disadvantaged areas
according to the Index of Relative Socio-Economic Disadvantage (Australian
Bureau of Statistics 2008).
In-depth, semi-structured interviews were held with 107 culturally and linguisti-
cally diverse youth in these neighbourhoods, sourced through local high schools
and community and youth services. Around five youth and community workers in
each area were also interviewed to provide background and context. Tables 10.1 and
10.2 outline the key features of the participants. Notable is that while a majority was
not born in Australia, most had lived there all their post-childhood life (62 % were
either born in Australia or had lived there for over 5 years).
Table 10.1 Gender and age Male 51 %

Female 49 %
14–16 years old 25 %
23 and over 7%
(Data on age missing 3 %)
Table 10.2 Regions of birth Born in Australia 21 %

and religion
Born overseas 79 %
Lived in Australia 5+ years (o/s born) 41 %
Region of birth
Africa 42 %
Australia 21 %
Middle East 15 %
Europe 9%
Asia 7%
New Zealand and Pacific 6%
Religion
Christian (unspecified) 37 %
Muslim 33 %
Catholic 10 %
No religion 9%
Hindu 3%
Sikh 1%
(Data on religion missing 7 %)
Data were collected between 2010 and 2012. The participants were asked about
the extent and nature of their intercultural relations, the ways they and others used
their local and city spaces, strategies for and feelings of inclusion and participation,
and local and national identity. Data were entered into the NVivo software pro-
gramme and coded by responses. They were then analysed according to themes
anticipated theoretically as well as those generated through the data collection
process.
10.3 Out of Place in the Nation
One of the most powerful effects of the shift to integrationism and the retreat from
multiculturalism is said to be the construction of some people as entitled to adjudi-
cate on the rights of others to membership in the civic body and the nation state
(Hage 2000). Efforts for exclusionary forms of “boundary maintenance” (Yuval
Davis 2006) are everyday ways of managing belonging and citizenship. In a practi-
cal sense, this is shown to be manifest through an increase in practices of public
racism, which, as Noble (2005: 115) argues, function as “the active, affective regu-
lation of the inappropriate existence of others”. This kind of racism or harassment,
according to these theorists, works to delineate national belonging by regulating the
physical presence of others in specific civic spaces (see also Chap. 12). How might
such practices be evident in the everyday life experiences of young people of diverse
backgrounds in Australia?
There was a disturbing frequency with which the young people in this research
reported being the targets of exclusionary practices in public places (see also Chap.
12). Overall, 75 % said that they had either experienced or witnessed this kind of
racism in a public space. It was in the public spaces of their cities, including public
transport, the streets and the beach, that these young people experienced the greatest
policing of their right to belong and to be treated as entitled to be present. This is a
finding consistent with other research that has established that young people experi-
ence and report incidents of public racist harassment more than any other age
cohort. For example, the IsmaU report into prejudice against Muslim and Arab
Australians has found that youth feel particularly at risk of harassment (Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission 2004: 3); and a large scale quantitative
study of racism in Australia has found the youngest cohort to have the highest rates
of reported experiences of racism (Dunn 2004). Everyday racism in the street in
particular is more commonly reported by young people than those in other age
groups; often it is two or even three times more likely to be reported by youth than
those who are middle aged or older (Dunn 2004).
Many young people in this research spoke of incidents in public places, often on
public transport, where they had been told “go back to your own country”. This was
generally reported by young people who were visibly different; for example,
Katherine (Karen, Indigenous Burmese; Brisbane) was told by a fellow passenger
160 A. Harris
on a bus that “no one needs you, it’s full up, why do you come here, it’s full up,
Brisbane is full”. Flora (Filipino/Maori background; Perth) was walking down the
street with a friend in a headscarf who was told, “You’re a terrorist, get out of my
country”. Jonathan (Afghani background; Adelaide) reported that “Since September
11th, my sister was walking down the road and some guy just beeped her and just
said, ‘You bloody Muslim, go back to your own country’”. And Jamila (Eritrean
background; Melbourne) had stopped wearing a headscarf because of the public
abuse she had suffered, saying that people would drive past blowing their horns and
scream, “Go back to your country, fucking terrorist”.
The participants also reported other experiences of exclusion in public space that
were not overt racist attacks, but had the effect of positioning them as outsiders,
whose right to appropriately participate in the space was put under question. Some
discussed how they struggled to freely engage in that most iconic Australian leisure
activity—going to the beach—because of looks and comments they were subject to
that made them feel like unwelcome outsiders. For example, Kim (Afghani back-
ground; Adelaide) said that
at the beach, whenever I go there, people obviously are, Australian people mostly—I could
say they are Australian people—for me, whenever I go I don’t feel like I am part of these
people or I am part of this group. I think it is because me, being a Muslim, or having a dif-
ferent belief or different thought.
Louise (Vietnamese background; Perth) provided more insight into how these
feelings of not being part of the group were entrenched. She reported that when she
was at the beach, she often saw efforts to exclude others from the Australian “group”
by calling into question their ability to be in the space properly:
A lot of Africans coming in jeans, shoes, hats, big shirts, baggy pants, and I always see
everyone looking at them and pointing at them, like ‘Why would you come to the beach
wearing that?’ I was like, well, if they want to they can. It’s not like there’s a sign saying
you have to wear this to the beach, otherwise you’re not allowed on. But I always see them
pointing it out and then I see Asians fully clothed and everyone’s looking at them and like,
‘Oh no, tourists’. I know what it feels like being called a tourist when you’re really, being
born here all my life.
Louise suggests that even when there are no explicit signs that regulate how one
should look or behave at the beach in order to fit in as a proper Australian, young
people of diverse backgrounds are subject to other subtle messages about how to
look right so that they can be seen and treated as an unremarkable member of the
national body rather than an outsider, intruder or “tourist”.
Another participant, Karen (Filipino background; Brisbane), had visited the
beach on the Australia Day that immediately followed the Cronulla riots that had
occurred approximately 2 months prior (a 2005 Sydney riot instigated by white
Anglo youth seeking to “reclaim their beaches” from those of migrant background).
She described feeling as though her family was somehow “noticed” as a presence
requiring regulatory action rather than as simply people who may be visibly differ-
ent but nonetheless Australian and therefore entitled to be present:
We went out the next Australia Day, and even though we did it every single year, we went
to the beach, and it felt like people were staring at us. I felt completely unsafe and I was just
waiting for someone to come up and start something violent. I just felt like we stuck out so
much, but not just that, that people were noticing. No matter if you’re born here, but if you
look different, if you’re not Anglo Saxon and you go out on a day like Australia Day, people
are like, ‘Oh, what are you doing here, you don’t look Australian’ or whatever. But if you
don’t go out, they’re like, ‘Why aren’t you celebrating Australia Day, you’re so
un-Australian’.
Karen suggests that the integrationist and white nationalist agenda (Hage 2000)
that shaped the Cronulla riot made legitimate other kinds of subtle exclusionary
practices. While she had often felt that she “stuck out” because she was not “Anglo
Saxon”, she now felt fearful and vigilant because Cronulla had given others permis-
sion to stare and potentially “start something violent”. She also indicates how young
people such as herself are placed in an impossible position of being obliged to per-
petually demonstrate efforts to be Australian by being present in iconic Australian
public spaces and public celebrations even while they are reminded that they can
never truly belong because of the way they look.
As Noble (2005: 114) suggests, “our ability to be comfortable in public settings
also rests on our ability to be acknowledged as rightfully existing there: to be rec-
ognized as belonging”. Such denials of acknowledgement of the entitled presence
of others are not easily accounted for when measuring public racism, but these
kinds of exclusionary practices had a profound effect on young people’s sense of
belonging. The most dramatic examples included physical and verbal abuse and
being ordered out of public spaces, but also damaging to their sense of belonging
were more subtle experiences of being looked at in suspicious ways, being given
“signs”, having strong feelings of insecurity and out-of-placeness invoked. As
Thomas (2011: 107) elaborates, these practices not only educate some young peo-
ple to avoid spatial transgression, but can serve to construct them as illegitimate
members of the nation. They are everyday acts of exclusion that function to regulate
citizenship and belonging.
10.4 Multicultural National Belongings
However, young people were also engaged in some critical counter-practices centred
on declarations of national belonging that refuted these processes of attempted
exclusion. Somewhat paradoxically, in spite of routine experiences of everyday racism
that served to position them as outsiders, they simultaneously expressed very positive
feelings of belonging to the nation. Ninety-one per cent said that they felt like they
belonged in Australia and 83 % said that they felt Australian. At the same time, only
6 % described their “cultural background” as “Australian”. Some typical answers to
questions about feeling Australian were statements like:
162 A. Harris
Jane (Filipino background; Adelaide): I definitely do feel Australian.

Luke (Afghani background; Adelaide): I sure do, yes.
John (Afghani background; Melbourne): Definitely. […] I'm proud of it.
James (Samoan background; Adelaide): Yeah, definitely.
Against efforts to regulate their rightful presence, they were thus making strong
claims about a right to belong, but also about their particular experience of hybridised
national identity. This is consistent with research that shows youth embracing and
actualizing more expansive, multiple and flexible notions of nationality and belong-
ing and hybrid identifications, and moving away from traditional and especially
monocultural ideas about citizenship (Ang et al. 2006; Maira 2009; Colombo and
Rebughini 2012). Many insisted on inhabiting a hybridized Australianness that did
not dilute or complicate, but rather enhanced their national belonging. For example:
Kim (Afghani background; Adelaide): I do (feel Australian). When I came to Australia,
when I saw these two different cultures and these two different religions, so I accepted both,
so I step between both. I'm really Australian too.
Afrisha (Sierra Leonean background; Adelaide): I’m an African, chilli eating Australian.
Flora (Filipino and Maori background; Perth): I describe myself as Australian, Filipino,
Maori. If someone says, ‘Where are you from?’, I say, ‘I’m Filipino-Maori but I was born
here. That’s exactly how I say it. So I say I’m Australian.
These young people suggest that they feel secure in their national identities and
actively claim a right to belong as hybrid subjects. This is evident in their very asser-
tive, sometimes even defiant or slightly defensive language of “definitely” feeling
Australian. This seems a strategy to manage the discursive effects of the retreat from
multiculturalism and the everyday expressions of integrationism they were con-
fronted with. This was also evident in some of the ways they resisted the idea that
anyone else had a right to adjudicate on their inclusion. Several made statements of
explicit refusal to accede to the authority of others to determine belonging. For
example, Malcolm (Ethiopian background; Melbourne) said:
I have a firm belief that as long as we accept the fact that we don’t fit in or we don’t belong
here, stuff like that, then we’re always going to be in a losing position to those who give us
those vibes and give us those ideas that we don’t belong here. So I think it’s about us telling
them, Australia is as much mine as yours. That’s the only way we’re going to get around it.
And Afrisha (Sierra Leonean background; Adelaide) said: “we’re home now, we
should feel Australian. We should feel Australian. We are Australian”. In this state-
ment, she claims a right to belong and to feel at home in the Australian nation; but
taken with a different emphasis, it also suggests that she and others like her are what
the home of the Australian nation has become. These examples indicate the desire
of these young people to make claims of ownership of the nation on their own terms,
as entitled citizens, for whom “Australia is as much mine as yours”.
What then makes possible these young people’s strong articulations of belonging
against frequent efforts to construct them as out of place? It is of course possible to
argue that these kinds of statements are purely rhetorical or performative, operating
as a kind of defensive or symbolic gesture against exclusion. However, recent
scholarship in the area of everyday multiculturalism provides an alternative prism
through which to view such declarations. This approach suggests that the lived reality
of productive relationality in culturally diverse neighbourhoods fosters conditions
where belonging is made real, even during times of backlash. In spite of their
experiences of exclusionary practices in some public spaces of the city these young
people articulated a strong sense of national belonging, and it is arguable that
this in turn was partly forged through their experiences of local belonging to their
multicultural neighbourhoods.
10.5 Multicultural Local Belongings
Theorists of visceral cosmopolitanism (Nava 2007) and everyday multiculturalism

(Wise and Velayutham 2009) have drawn attention to the significance of mundane
practices of interaction and sharing place in local diverse communities in under-
standing where larger issues of national belonging are worked out, even in conditions
of a retreat from multiculturalism. For example, Gilroy (2004: xi) argues that we can
only adequately theorise more abstract notions of cosmopolitanism, conviviality and
changing forms of national identity in superdiversity through analysis of “the pro-
cesses of cohabitation and interaction that have made multiculture an ordinary fea-
ture of social life”. Others such as Wise (2005) and Lobo (2010) also argue that
productive relationality and shared belongings are made real in the everyday experi-
ence of an “interethnic habitus” that is forged in culturally diverse neighbourhoods.
It was in their local areas, where diversity was normalised and social relations
were often experienced as both open and respectful, that young people in this
research were best able to articulate and enact a right to be present. The young people
reported high levels of comfort with the diversity in their local environments: 89 %
felt that the cultural diversity in their area had a positive impact on them and 83 %
said they regularly hung out with people of different backgrounds in their neighbour-
hoods. Eighty-one percent thought their neighbourhoods were good places for young
people to live in. Although several of these neighbourhoods were stigmatised places,
the young people reported a strong sense of safety and community. They described
positive neighbourly relations and a productive communal culture. They elaborated
on how they felt able to fit in and be part of an ordinary or commonplace diversity
(see, Wessendorf 2010) in their areas and what enabled them to feel comfortable in
the streets and spaces of these multicultural neighbourhoods.
Afrisha (Sierra Leonean background; Adelaide): I feel I fit in to the western suburbs. I think
blend in just fine. […] I feel fine there. I don’t feel like I stand out in any particular way.
That’s alright.
Billie (Maori background; Sydney): I feel safe. I feel welcome. I feel really welcome […] I
feel—when I’m in this area, I honestly feel a lot of pride because these people are so amaz-
ing. They make me feel so happy and joyful all the time.
Duc (Vietnamese/New Zealand background; Sydney): when I walk around [name of
neighbourhood] I feel like I can blend in because everywhere I walk I know people with
different religions, cultures, background or how they grew up or anything.
Further, they described their local multicultural contexts as places where recogni-
tion and respect were mostly productively negotiated through everyday interactions
across difference. This was made possible because no one group dominated and
164 A. Harris
people tended to accept the right of others, and of difference, to be present. For
example Sam (Sudanese background; Brisbane) described the difference he had
experienced between living in Sudan and then Egypt, and living in a diverse
Australian suburb thus:
[…] where I come from, there’s always only two groups […] Then coming here, there’s a
whole heap of groups. So you can’t start problem with anyone. All you can really do is get
to know everyone, because it’s pretty interesting.
This did not mean that there was no conflict or that people necessarily liked one
another, but there was a regard for others as equally entitled to be there. Young
people took for granted the heterogeneity of their areas, and were disinclined to
perceive it as “unusual, undesirable, temporal” (Back et al. 2008: 19). As Malcolm
(Ethiopian background; Melbourne) said about his neighbourhood:
[…] you actually have to learn to appreciate and respect different cultures and different
faiths, political views. You don’t have to agree with them, you don’t have to love them but
in order to live here and live amongst people in a harmonious way then you've got to actu-
ally respect it.
Some specifically contrasted this with their experience in other parts of the city.
For example, Kim (Afghani background, Adelaide) said:
Basically when I wear my scarf, sometimes I feel like people will judge me differently and
they will treat me differently. But in my neighbourhood they are really nice people. When
I’m going out, they respect me, they treat me as everyone else. So I feel really comfortable
about living there.
It is arguable then that these local experiences of respect and acceptance of the
right of diverse others to belong in turn went some way towards supporting their
capacities for flexible conceptualisations and articulations of national belonging.
This everyday lived experience of feeling at home in what Hage (2000: 210) calls
“the multicultural real” in turn likely scaffolded their capacity to claim a right to
belong to the nation. Their lived experience of the ordinary diversity in Australianness
and practices of local belonging enacted “in everyday lives, away from the heat of
moral panic and state- and media-driven anxieties about social cohesion” (Noble
2009: 51) clearly fostered their ability to also feel at home in their national identities
as hybrid subjects. It was here that they were developing the competencies for inclu-
sive belongings and expanding identities and were able to position themselves as
rightfully present, even while in the civic spaces beyond their neighbourhoods they
routinely faced efforts to construct them as outsiders.
10.6 Conclusion
A contradictory picture has emerged here of young Australians of diverse back-

grounds growing up under conditions of everyday diversity and a multiculturalism
backlash, which inevitably situates them as both “at home” and “out of place”.
There are several conclusions to be drawn from this paradox. First, it is important to
know the extent and depth of exclusionary practices as they are enacted upon young
people in the public spaces of Australian cities. There can be a tendency in schol-
arly, public and policy debate to imagine young people as ideal hybrid subjects who
do not face the challenges experienced by past generations of immigrants, and as
therefore in some ways embodying and embracing a “post-multicultural” turn (for
an overview see, Fortier 2008). It is important therefore to further investigate the
nature and extent of the exclusionary practices that occur with disturbing frequency
and cast a threatening shadow over these young people’s everyday lives as they
attempt to move around their city spaces.
Second, what is also evident is how belonging, and not just exclusion, is also
experienced and constructed spatially. For young people, it is the local neighbour-
hood space that is perhaps most critical in facilitating belonging. Because of this, it
is vital to understand more about how young people enact local citizenships and see
how their “right to the city” is first and perhaps best exercised in the immediate
space of the local neighbourhood. This is important in the context of the emergent
sociology of cosmopolitanism (Kendall et al. 2009). While there has been a cautious
optimism amongst some about the open and unpredictable nature of the city and the
ways that an urban environment used by many can be a space for productive cross-
ings and meetings (for an overview see, Sandercock 2003), for these young people,
the picture was very different. For example, the central business district or public
transport were not experienced by them as open and unmarked spaces of unstruc-
tured encounter, but were already shaped by a “mainstream” sensibility, and as a
result they felt very uncomfortable with unpredictable crossings. It is their local
literacies that need to be scaled up, in order to get beyond a more adult-centric
notion of cosmopolitan city space.
Finally, their expressions of national identity and their experiences of local
belonging indicate that we are beyond a point of reasserting a model of multicultur-
alism as simply tolerating or even celebrating difference or recognizing minority
practices and rights. They attempt a new imagining of a multicultural Australian
citizenship built on an acknowledgement of the entitled presence of others as legiti-
mate members of the nation, and the relinquishment of the notion that the majori-
tised determine inclusion, even while sometimes the best they can do is make strong
assertions and try to keep to safe spaces. This is vastly different from a multicultural
politics grounded in respect for the non-confrontational private practice of cultural
difference at home and adherence to common values and allegiances in the public
sphere. These young people position themselves at the forefront of the shaping of
flexible and multiple conceptualizations of national belonging, which is the legacy
of Australian multiculturalism and testament to its success in the everyday spaces of
local diverse communities, even under conditions of backlash.
Finally, this chapter supports a turn towards theorising the everyday politics of
belonging in order to understand possibilities for multicultural citizenship. By look-
ing closely at the everyday practices of social actors in different civic spaces, it is
possible to ascertain how young people negotiate larger and more abstract questions
of citizenship in their daily lives. As Erel (2011: 2065) observes, the neighbourhood
and the nation are structured by specific governmentalities that regulate belonging,
166 A. Harris
but these are produced through contestation amongst individuals and groups.
Citizenship and belonging emerge here as not merely categories of legal status or
identity, but as made up of a range of acts of local and national membership prac-
tised in specific sites.
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Chapter 11
“And Yet We Are Still Excluded”:
Reclaiming Multicultural Queer Histories
and Engaging with Contemporary
Multicultural Queer Realities
Lian Low and Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli
Abstract In this chapter, we contend that reclaiming multiculturalism entails

engaging with and including sexual and gender diverse histories, heritages and
contemporary realities. We explore the ongoing dilemmas, concerns and strategies
in placing “multisexuality” and “multigender” on the “multicultural” agenda in
Australia, particularly in relation to policy development and research. We discuss
how “reclaiming multiculturalism” and the promotion of “global citizenship”
requires a reclaiming of multicultural queer histories and heritages, achieved
through decolonising research projects, postcolonising socio-political activist net-
works, and publications that engage with multiplicity in identities and communities,
or “multiple lifeworlds”.
Keywords Multiculturalism • Multicultural policies • Ethnicity • Gender •

Sexuality • Heteronormativity • Intersectionality • Queer
Post-White Australia, Australia’s subsequent multicultural policies and community

action enabled its culturally and linguistically diverse population of migrants and
refugees from non-Anglo-Celtic backgrounds to gain citizenship rights (see also
Chaps. 8 and 10; for a history of multicultural governance in Australia see Chaps.
12 and 13). Yet absent from these multicultural histories are multicultural gay, les-
bian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (GLBTIQ) Australian narratives
(see, for example, Low 2005; Pallotta-Chiarolli 1999b, 2008b). In 2014, there still
exists the silencing and exclusion of sexual and gender diversities in heterosexist
L. Low (*)
Peril Magazine, Melbourne, Australia
e-mail: lian.low@gmail.com
M. Pallotta-Chiarolli
School of Health and Social Development, Deakin University, Burwood, Australia
e-mail: maria.pallotta-chiarolli@deakin.edu.au

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16003-0_11
170 L. Low and M. Pallotta-Chiarolli
multicultural policies, discourses, community spaces and services. In this chapter, we

contend that “reclaiming multiculturalism” cannot sit comfortably and confidently
with “global citizenship and ethical engagement with diversity” if it does not engage
with and include sexual and gender diverse histories, heritages and contemporary
realities. We explore the ongoing dilemmas, concerns and strategies in placing
“multisexuality” and “multigender” on the “multicultural” agenda in Australia, par-
ticularly in relation to policy development and research. As Cope and Kalantzis state:
[…] people are simultaneously the members of multiple lifeworlds, so their identities have
multiple layers, each layer in complex relation to the others […]. We have to be proficient
as we negotiate these many lifeworlds- the many lifeworlds each of us inhabit, and the many
lifeworlds we encounter in our everyday lives. (1995: 10–11)
Likewise, we discuss how “reclaiming multiculturalism” and the promotion of

“global citizenship” require a reclaiming of multicultural queer histories and heri-
tages, through decolonising research projects, postcolonising socio-political activist
networks, and publications that engage with multiplicity in identities and communi-
ties, or “multiple lifeworlds”. First, we challenge the exclusion of contemporary
multicultural queer realities and the research undertaken to explore this absence.
Our core example is a community consultation research project on same-sex
attracted young people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities
hosted by the Centre for Multicultural Youth and Victoria University and the result-
ing report, Teaching Diversities: Same-sex attracted young people, CALD commu-
nities and arts-based community engagement (Harris 2011).1 We then analyse the
meanings and deployment of multiculturalism when it fails to address gender and
sexual diversities, the “ethnic excuses” used to maintain a heteronormative and gen-
dernormative status quo. In the final section, we examine two examples of sites of
local, national and global inclusion and engagement by analysing the work of ILGA
(International Lesbian and Gay Association) and AGMC Inc (Australian GLBTIQ
Multicultural Council): two networks addressing the rights of multifaith, multicul-
tural GLBTIQ peoples and communities. In addition, we discuss Peril, an Asian-
Australian arts and culture publication, as a case-study example of direct and
specific incorporation of multisexual multigender realities.
11.1 Challenging the Exclusion of Contemporary

Multicultural Queer Realities
Since the 1980s many postcolonial feminist and queer theorists have been challeng-
ing the heteronormative and gendernormative framing of multicultural policies,
programs and practices, pointing out their operationalisation of the rhetoric of
inclusion, social justice and diversity while simultaneously displaying a lack of
1
See Gay and Lesbian Health Victoria CALD section for a comprehensive list of the available
resources/research reports: http://www.glhv.org.au/library?keys=&topic=36&format=All.
11 “And Yet We Are Still Excluded”: Reclaiming Multicultural Queer Histories… 171
proficiency, and exclusion and discrimination against non-heterosexual and

genderqueer members of culturally diverse communities (see Anzaldua 1987;
McLaren 1993; Pallotta-Chiarolli 1995, 1999a, 2004; Trinh 1991). Indeed, Harris
posits that while the problem of the twentieth century was “racialised segregation
and oppression”, the “problem of the twenty-first century” is “the further marginal-
ization within already marginalized groups […] the history and occurrence of
homophobia and heterosexism” whereby the more privileged heteronormative and
gendernormative group members downgrade, discriminate and oppress other less
privileged group members (2009: 431). Or, as Freire (1990) succinctly explained,
the oppressed become the oppressors.
Thus, what needs to be reclaimed is the awareness that multiculturalism must
explore the interweaving of “multiple lifeworlds” and advocate for those living on
the borders of socio-cultural groupings based on ethnicity, gender, sexuality and
other variables of personal identity. This is a living contemporary multiculturalism
that engages with intersectionalities involving “the crossing of an indeterminate
number of borderlines […] multiple in its hyphenation” (Trinh 1991: 107). The
borderlands where multiculturalism needs to engage with diversity and advocate for
the marginal within the marginal is a space where one can find “an overlay of codes,
a multiplicity of culturally inscribed subject positions, a displacement of normative
reference codes, and a polyvalent assemblage of new cultural meanings” (McLaren
1993: 121). Multicultural policies, programmes and practices must engage with,
support and affirm individuals with multiple identities from multiple lifeworlds,
upholding them as sites of confluence and intermixture, rather than expecting them
to “self-scissor” and then assimilate to one “world” at the expense of another. As
Trinh writes:
Multiculturalism does not lead us very far if it remains a question of difference only
between one culture and another […]. To cut across boundaries and borderlines is to live
aloud the malaise of categories and labels; it is to resist simplistic attempts at classifying; to
resist the comfort of belonging to a classification. (1991: 107–108)
Being GLBTIQ and raised within an ethnic/religious group requires the negotiation
and interweaving of varying and multiple regulations, expectations and social codes
in relation to gender, sexuality and ethnicity (Pallotta-Chiarolli 2005a). Identity and
belonging with its consequent regulations, expectations and codes come from a per-
son’s predominantly heteronormative and gendernormative ethnic/religious fami-
lies and communities; predominantly Western/white middle class GLBTIQ
communities; and predominantly heteronormative and gendernormative wider
social, political, educational, media and health institutions and systems. Savin-
Williams (1998) presents three main developmental tasks of GLBTIQ young people
from diverse ethnic/religious backgrounds that are not necessarily experienced by
GLBTIQ young people from dominant Anglo-white backgrounds. First, the young
person needs to cultivate both a sexual identity and an ethnic/spiritual identity.
Second, the young person must resolve or manage any conflicts that may arise in
claiming allegiance to an ethnic/religious reference group and to GLBTIQ commu-
nities; and third, the young person needs to negotiate any stigma and discrimination
encountered because of the interconnections of homophobia, racism, sexism,

anti-religious mind-sets and classism.
For many GLBTIQ young people from diverse ethnic backgrounds, their ethnic/
religious community and family can nurture a cultural identification, offer a deep
sense of ethnic heritage and spiritual values, and provide a sense of self within the
context of a family that shares a youth’s struggles and oppressions from the wider
society; such as racism, Islamophobia and classism (Beckett et al. 2013; Greene
1997; Hooghe et al. 2010; Jackson and Sullivan 1999). The poem “Conversation
with My Grandmama”, by Annie Ling (1992) provides a powerful and positive
example of the identity-forming processes discussed above, as well as an example
of global citizenship. The title of Ling’s anthology, Mei Tze is Also My Name, is
indicative of her claiming of her Chinese-Malaysian identity alongside her Chinese-
Australian identity. She transcends both the traditional world of her grandparents in
Sibu, Malaysia, and the Chinese-Australian world of her parents in Sydney,
Australia. Simultaneously, she claims her dowry, “I want my gold as in Chinese
tradition”, and talks about her “lesbian existence”. She challenges her grandmoth-
er’s gender and lesbian constructs and challenges Western society’s constructs of
ethnicity, gender and lesbian sexuality. She draws from all socio-cultural construc-
tions to devise a multiple or mestizaje (Anzaldua 1987) identity that cuts through
any stereotype of homogeneity within any one category. She can connect across
time, geography and cultures to voice her particular identities with both her signifi-
cant and societal others.
To date, and despite over 30 years of theorizing, dialogue and activism, there
appear to be two main approaches in multicultural policies, programmes and prac-
tices, neither of which attempt to directly address and engage with the multiple
lifeworlds of multicultural queers. The first is Exclusion: where multicultural and
multifaith GLBTIQ individuals and communities are deliberately excluded from
multicultural policies, programs, events and welfare. The second is Indirect
Incorporation: where multicultural policies, programs, events and welfare are
worded and organized in such a way as to be open to interpretation and application
as including sexual diversity and gender diversity: yet this is never explicitly stated
to avoid antagonising those in power, the gatekeepers, of multicultural organiza-
tions and sectors who may be homophobic and transphobic, and possibly sabotage/
veto the whole policy.
A third approach, however, is beginning to make inroads within some multicul-
tural research, sectors and organizations, and it is the approach that demonstrates an
“ethical engagement with diversity”: Direct and Specific Incorporation whereby
multicultural research, policies, programs, events and welfare directly and specifi-
cally include and affirm sexual diversity and gender diversity, and directly address
homophobia and transphobia. For example, the Victorian Government’s Victorian
Refugee health and wellbeing strategy: Consultation summary identifies GLBTIQ
refugees and asylum seekers as having particular needs (Department of Health
2013). The response of Government and service providers alike, however, shows
that this acknowledgement “is not reflected, in any systematic way, in policies, pro-
grams and the delivery of support services to this population” (Noto et al. 2014: 3).
This third much-needed approach was also evident in a community consultation

research project on same-sex attracted young people from culturally and linguisti-
cally diverse communities funded by Victoria University in collaboration with the
Centre for Multicultural Youth. The co-author of this chapter, Lian Low, was a
research assistant in the project. Together with another research assistant, Greig
Friday, they interviewed 25 focus group participants and conducted nine one-on-one
interviews over a period of 4 months. The resulting report, Teaching Diversities:
Same-sex attracted young people, CALD communities and arts-based community
engagement (Harris 2011) provided concrete examples of the complexity of living
as a culturally and linguistically diverse young person in a Western context. Below
are Low’s summary of some of the themes and recommendations that arose from
the consultation as a reflection on the ongoing need to “reclaim” a multiculturalism
that actually lives up to its claims of ‘ethically engaging with diversity’.
Religion: and its impact on homophobic views within Christian and Muslim faith
communities. An inversion of this however can be found in the GLBTIQ communi-
ties where religious participants feel they have to hide their religious identities:
I guess for me it’s more about my faith background than my ethnicity […] I go out in the
gay bar and I meet somebody, not saying my name […] because I’m thinking that they
might think that I’m some crazy guy or some terrorist. (Egyptian gay male, Muslim, 26)
Identity and isolation: in relation to geography, religion, culture and the queer
communities. Participants discussed the frustrations of prioritising aspects of
identity in different contexts.
This is what my mum said a few days after I came out, ‘Aussies or white people can be gay,
but as a Vietnamese person there’s no such thing, you’re not allowed to’. (Vietnamese gay
male, 25)
As the above quote illustrates, some participants talked about experiences

whereby family members stressed to them that coming out would bring shame on
their families or community members. These participants called for role models of
GLBTIQ individuals from their own cultures, but also cultural advocates and allies
who are not GLBTQ.
Racism in the wider society and within the queer communities: some partici-
pants felt uncomfortable and unsafe when entering spaces dominated by white people
(similar findings are reported in Chap. 10 in relation to non-Anglo Australian youth;
on “whiteness” see Chap. 8), including the queer scene. Most respondents advo-
cated for having anti-racism campaigns in the GLBTIQ communities examining the
systemic ways in which white privilege oppressed culturally diverse GLBTIQ
members. Furthermore, participants recommended addressing online racism on
GLBTIQ dating websites and setting up online safe spaces. A few participants
also observed a “racial fetishisation”, or exoticisation of their cultural and racial
identities.
Education around the history of sexualities and gender identities from non-
white, non-western perspectives: some young people highlighted how colonial
practices and perspectives impacted upon the histories and identities of sexual and
gender diverse communities:
I think there’s this assumption that people of colour, communities that aren’t white, don’t
have a queer history, and that’s so wrong. There’s the Fa’afafines from the Islands which
are basically trans men and there’s heaps of queer culture in non-white culture—like in
Indigenous, Asian and black cultures. (PapuaNewGuinean/TSI/Scottish genderqueer
participant, 21)
Another example of “direct and specific incorporation” and “ethical engagement

with diversity” is We’re Family Too: a report into the effects of homophobia in
Arabic-speaking communities in NSW (Kassisieh 2012). A range of individuals and
organisations tied to the Arab community and the GLBTIQ community in NSW
collaborated to investigate the effects of homophobia on Same-Sex Attracted (SSA)
people from Arabic-speaking backgrounds in NSW, while also drawing attention to
racism and stereotyping within NSW’s GLBT community. The report also exam-
ines how SSA people from Arabic-speaking backgrounds in NSW provide support
for each other, and recommends a range of initiatives that can address the effects of
homophobia and racism in multicultural communities.
11.2 The Meanings and Deployment of Multiculturalism

in (Not) Addressing Gender and Sexual Diversity
To date, multiculturalism is largely defined and deployed in ways that maintain

heteropatriarchal selective cultural/religious heritage and traditions. Policies,
programmes, festivals, commemoratives, and welfare systems are being used to
establish and develop a multicultural community’s culture/faith in Australia
by producing heteronormative and gendernormative cultural narratives and
discourses. A main way that this is done is by constructing and upholding the dis-
course of “the authentic religious migrant/refugee experience” as heteronormative,
devised and policed by hegemonic gatekeepers of various multicultural communi-
ties, organizations and systems.
When attempts are made to resist, shift or negotiate these meanings and deploy-
ments of multiculturalism, what Pallotta-Chiarolli (2005b) has called “The Ethnic
Excuses” are activated and enacted. These include: “We’ve got enough to handle
with racism and sexism in our multicultural school/health service/organisation.
Homophobia is too much and very different for our community”; “This is a moral
issue that our multicultural religious families/communities will object to”; “It’s rac-
ist to challenge ethnic people and communities on their homophobia as you’re not
respecting their traditions or their rights to their beliefs”; and “Our ethnic and
migrant/refugee families will be offended as it’s contrary to their cultural heritage
and maintenance of cultural traditions that as a multicultural school/health service/
organisation we are committed to”.
In the above four examples, a hegemonic and homogenizing construction and
depiction of multicultural families and communities is put forward as the authentic,
singular voice, perspective and experience, one, which, is beyond reproach and
debate by Anglo groups, as well as by some ethnic groups towards other ethnic
groups, as that would be deemed racist. In other words, the accusation of “racism”
can be used to silence groups outside the challenged group when they endeavour to
debate or critique its queerphobia, as per example four above. We argue that it is
actually racist and ethnocentric to dismiss/stereotype whole ethnic communities as
queerphobic without acknowledging the diversity within those communities, includ-
ing GLBTIQ migrants and refugees themselves, and the significance of other
factors apart from ethnicity that encourage homophobia among migrant/refugee
communities (Pallotta-Chiarolli 1995).
Indeed, some Western political leaders are mobilising “suspected attitudes
towards homosexuality” among migrant and refugee communities in “state prac-
tices of exclusion”, the denial of citizenship, and the erosion of multiculturalism as
national policy due to the “alleged incompatibility” of Islam (see Chap. 6) and
other faith and value-systems of incoming migrants and refugees with the “demo-
cratic values” of Western countries (Kosnick 2011: 132). A critical deconstruction-
ist approach would ask and address the following questions: how have these
conclusions about the queerphobia of an ethnic community—and the inappropri-
ateness of challenging this—been drawn, and for whose purposes and gain; who
was consulted; who was silenced; who are the gatekeepers and how would/could
we access alternative voices; what surveys, research and discussions have been
held and by whom and where; how have discourses of “morality”, “offence” and
“racism” been co-opted and applied here? Wouldn’t some families consider the
emotional, verbal and physical abuse and violence that GLBTIQ members of their
cultural communities are experiencing as “immoral”, “offensive” and against their
religious values of love, duty of care and peace? How would an “ethical engage-
ment with diversity” create a greater awareness of the diversity of experiences,
perspectives and realities that challenge the hegemonic and homogenous “authentic
migrant/refugee” discourse? How do we engage community leaders and members
in, and provide access to, debates and texts and examples of a range of lived reali-
ties of gender and sexuality within their own cultures in Australia, in countries of
origin, and across a range of cultures? How can we utilise existing texts and call for
a greater range of representations of gender and sexuality issues in culturally
diverse texts, in media representations of ethnicity, and of course the incorporation
of a diversity of ethnicity-gender-sexuality issues into mainstream Anglo-Australian
texts and representations?
11.3 Reclaiming Multicultural Queer Histories

and Heritages
As part of undertaking the above critical deconstruction and broad questioning of

contemporary communities in global, national and local contexts, it is important to
access and promote cross-cultural anthropological, historical, pre-colonial, reli-
gious and cultural codes, biographies and narratives in relation to sexualities and
genders in order to open up a broader base of knowledge within which to situate
historical, colonial, and contemporary Western, Christian constructions (see, for

example, Drucker 2000; Massad 2008). We need to ensure that we are presenting
multicultural persons and communities in Australia as not only end-products of
various political, cultural and social processes, thereby rendering them solely as
passive victims, but also as having various amounts of decolonising agency, such as
resisting, negotiating, manipulating past borders and boundaries, and embarking
upon new processes of queer re/identification and re/claiming queer spaces (Pallotta-
Chiarolli 2004).
Homosexuality is sometimes viewed in multicultural communities as a symptom
of “Westernization”, representing the “moral decadence” of Western society (Jaspal
and Cinnirella 2010; Shannahan 2010). This becomes particularly pertinent and
poignant in a “multicultural queer” person’s decisions regarding “coming out”, a
prevalent Western construction of publicly declaring and openly living one’s sexual-
ity within one’s family of origin, rather than closeting or concealing it (Hammoud-
Beckett 2007; Pallotta-Chiarolli 2005b). As part of our processes of decolonising
queer histories and heritages, we need to ask and address: why is homosexuality
considered by some multicultural individuals and communities to be a Western
“sin”, “sickness”, and/or “crime”? How has colonialism and Christianisation erased,
or ignored, or re-written pre-colonial and pre-Christian sexual and gender diversi-
ties? (Aldrich 2002). What knowledge and realities of global queer histories and
heritages can be researched and reclaimed, and indeed have survived, persisted and
thrived as post-colonial queer identities/cultures/communities? (see, for example,
Murray and Roscoe 1997; Tamale 2011; Vanessa 2007). Researchers such as
Epprecht and Egya find that many pre-colonial cultures were “historically more
accommodating to sexual difference than present-day homophobes allow” and in
the case of African countries, “it is the dogmatic intolerance of same-sex sexuality
that is ‘un-African’ in the sense that it largely reflects imported Christian missionary
ideology and colonial law” (2011: 369). Indeed, as Shoko argues in the case of
Zimbabwe where President Mugabe has used Christianity and pan-Africanism or
African nationalism to discriminate against homosexuality, colonial legislation was
“imposed on indigenous peoples without interest in or inquiry into the indigenous
view of homosexuality” (2010: 645–46); these indigenous views are being increas-
ingly made available and enacted in contemporary African settings as ongoing
forms of resistance and decolonising. As Hamilton writes, the homophobia dis-
played by diverse Africans “largely reflects the victory of the rightist Christian
rhetoric” as well as the overwhelming success of colonialism that it has until recent
queer activisms largely erased any pre-colonial queer knowledges and realities and
positioned itself as the authentic historical knowledge and reality of a colonized
country (2012: 87).
That particular [Christian] God came to Africa [and Asia and the Pacific Islands] to pave the
way for colonialists and to pacify Africans for domination by European colonial powers.
We have to wonder how consistent Mugabe is when he uses a foreign religion (Christianity)
while speaking a foreign language (English) to claim that it is un-African to be gay. (Mutua
2011: 460)
Alongside these profound questions and processes of decolonising

heteronormative and gendernormative histories, how do we avoid another layer
of colonising and racist practices in undertaking this excavation and archaeology?
As Atluri (2012: 721–22) points out, the “same colonizing power that fuelled a sys-
tem of monetary debt and instituted colonial laws that criminalized diverse sexuali-
ties throughout the global south can now refuse economic aid to formerly colonized
subjects in the name of championing sexual ‘rights’”. In particular, reclaiming and
proclaiming multicultural queer histories means being mindful of four problematic
and racist/colonial dehumanizing interpretative processes. The first is Pedestalling
(mythologizing?): where pre-colonial queer histories and heritages are upheld as
perfect and unproblematic, thereby divesting them of individual and socio-cultural
complexity. As Lewis (2011: 215) writes, “pre-colonial African societies exhibited
numerous examples of repressive and coercive constructions of bodies and sexual-
ity”. The issue is not to pedestal or demonise but to make visible the multiple ways
sexualities and genders were codified, judged and experienced. Second, we need to
avoid Exoticising (Othering?): where pre-colonial queer histories and heritages, and
their ongoing forms in contemporary settings, are only studied and highlighted as
curiosities or entertainments, as points of contrast and difference to Western-centric
norms and understandings of sexual and gender diversity. Third, we need to be
mindful of Demonizing (crusading against?): where precolonial queer histories and
heritages are displayed and studied as pathological and problematic, particularly
when contrasted to Western “civilized” understandings of GLBIQ identities, poli-
tics and rights. Finally, we must be alert to Re-interpreting (appropriating?): where
pre-colonial queer histories and heritages are reconstructed and adapted in contem-
porary settings to showcase and work for Western GLBTIQ constructions of identi-
ties, rights and global citizenship. As Tamale (2011: 26) states, “there is an
underlying resonance between the respective structures of Western and African
societies that compels us not to completely reject or dismantle Western theoretical
scaffoldings because they provide some useful tools for researchers to reflect upon
and to develop insights concerning African sexualities” while simultaneously there
are “nuanced specificities”’ that do differ and need to be respected and addressed;
such as in the imposition of Western terms such as gay and lesbian, their assumption
of sexual binary rather than sexual fluidity, and their use in global systems/markets
of consumption and commodification.
11.4 Sites of Local, National and Global Inclusion

and Engagement: The Work of ILGA and AGMC
There is a need to provide a diversity of mental, emotional, physical and spiritual

spaces and places where the multiple selves and multiple lifeworlds can come
together to share similar and differing joys; negotiate the multiple and interwoven
phobias; share understandings with others from one’s own groups and other groups
regarding living and loving in diversity; and plan political, social and other actions
and strategies. The establishment of the AGMC Inc (Australian Gay, Lesbian,
Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer Multicultural Council; agmc.org.au),
ILGA (International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association; ilga.
org) and the many multicultural and multifaith GLBTIQ social and support groups
are a testimony to the need to engage with people’s lived experiences of negotiating
and interweaving multiple identities, multiple group allegiances, multiple commu-
nity belongings and undertake political and community action (Pallotta-Chiarolli
2005a, 2008a).
AGMC Inc was established in 2004 and has held conferences, forums, film
nights, dance parties, sat on local, national and international boards, participated in
ethnic, queer and mainstream media, and produced its own recommendations and
strategies for the inclusion of multicultural GLBTIQ identities and issues into mul-
ticultural, mainstream and GLBTIQ community policies, programmes and practices
(Chang and Apostle 2008; Pallotta-Chiarolli 2008a). Indeed, AGMC has sometimes
been a catalyst for finding intimate partners who share similar joys, challenges and
understandings in regard to living and loving in diversity. Thus, from discussion
forums to dance-parties, it caters for the internal diversity of needs and interests
within their specific multicultural groups.2 By 2008, amidst debates and contentions
within the ECCV (Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria) that AGMC was not
privy to, it achieved recognition and was granted membership into the ECCV and
thereby became a member of FECCA (Federation of Ethnic Communities Council
of Australia). Since then, it has had stalls and given papers at FECCA conferences.
Thus, AGMC is a pertinent example of ethically engaging with diversity; as it
provides a space and place of support and action situated on the borders between
ethnic, mainstream and queer organizations, policy developers, and service provid-
ers. AGMC also engages with global citizenship by being a member of ILGA which
reports on and engages with global, national and local policies, actions, and support
services throughout the world with sub-groups in the Asia-Pacific, Africa, South
America, Europe, the UK and USA.
Thus, these two organizations are examples of addressing seven significant fac-
tors in the successful negotiation of people’s various identities and communities,
and the extent to which they feel safe, comfortable and confident in being visible.
First, they provide strong local, national and global support networks and friend-
ships with other GLBTIQ people of same and/or similar cultural and religious
backgrounds. Second, they provide access to, and participation in, both the GLBTIQ
and ethnic communities while allowing members to transcend both to live with a
code of their own. Third, by being able to select how “out” or anonymous to be as
members of these organizations and in participating in their events, forums and
actions, GLBTIQ people are able to have control over how, when and if to “come
out” or “invite people to come in” (Hammoud-Beckett 2007). For example, AGMC
auspices the Queer Muslims Network in Australia wherein some of its members
only ever discuss and connect anonymously via the internet forums. Fourth, these
2
See http://www.agmc.org.au/multiculturaldirectory/ for listings of groups.
organizations obtain media coverage of multicultural and global GLBTIQ

individuals and events, films and other resources, and assist in making them avail-
able in queer, ethnic community and mainstream papers, television, film and music
such as the documentaries A Jihad for Love (Halal Films 2007), Parents Reborn
(Cipelletti/AGEDO 2009) and Courage Unfolds (International Gay and Lesbian
Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) Asia Program 2011), and which have all
been shown by AGMC at public events with discussions and festivity. Similarly,
educational, workplace and health systems can access these sites and their resources
in order to address racism, sexism and homophobia equally, consistently and in
interconnected ways via policy development, professional development pro-
grammes and pastoral care of clients, students and staff (Savin-Williams 1998).
Finally, these organizations are meeting the needs of GLBTIQ people from diverse
ethnic/religious backgrounds who want queer community organisations and ser-
vices, GLBTIQ venues, papers and other media/internet avenues to promote and
implement policies and practices that cater for their diverse cultural backgrounds.
These include schools, GLBTIQ community services, ethnic community services
and mainstream health services, all of which need to undertake research into and
resourcing their multicultural, multisexual populations (Yip 2008).
11.5 Peril: A Specific Example/Site of “Ethical Engagement”

with Diversity
Peril is an online Asian-Australian arts and cultural magazine which was founded in
2006 by Hoa Pham (editor) together with editorial advisers Tom Cho and Dr Tseen
Khoo. Together they chose the provocative name because it referenced the deroga-
tory labelling of the wave of Chinese immigration to Australia in the nineteenth cen-
tury (Pham 2006). Accordingly, Peril has lived up to its name and publishes culturally
savvy and political material that engages with Asian-Australian themes, otherwise
not covered by the wider Australian media. The genre of material that is published
are by established and emerging writers and include non-fiction, literary fiction and
non-fiction, poetry and blog posts, which are inclusive of gender and sexually diverse
themes, and the editors past and present are gender and sexually diverse members of
the Asian-Australian community. At the time of writing this chapter, Peril’s editors
were Lian Low (Editor-in-Chief and Prose), Eleanor Jackson (Poetry) and Owen
Leong (Visual Arts) (Peril 2012). In 2014, they are Lian Low (Editor-at-Large),
Eleanor Jackson (Editor-in-Chief and Poetry), Nikki Lam (Visual Arts) Juliana Qian
(Prose, guest editor) and Jarni Blakkarly (Politics and Arts). Furthermore, Peril also
has editorial advisers and board members that govern its operation.
In a guest blog post on an Asian-American blog site, The Plaid Bag Connection,
Hoa Pham, an established author and playwright, observed that in 2006, the
gatekeepers of publishing houses were majority white Australians who were still
reluctant to publish culturally diverse material. This lack of publishing opportuni-
ties provided the impetus for Peril’s founding editors to create a space for
Asian-Australian perspectives (Pham 2012). For example, in 2008, Alice Pung

edited a ground-breaking anthology, Growing up Asian in Australia. Prior to the
book’s publication however, Pung was advised by a publishing industry person that
her original introduction was too heavy and would scare away bookshop custom-
ers—it detailed the invasion and dispossession of Australia’s Indigenous peoples,
the White Australia policy, and also included information about the racist violence
towards the Chinese during the 1850s and 60s. Pung strategically took this advice
so that she could “infiltrate” popular, everyday culture with “stories about how inte-
gral Asian-Australians are to our national identity” (Pung 2009). Not only did Pung
accomplish this goal, she also succeeded in infiltrating the VCE (Victorian Certificate
of Higher Education) high school curricula with stories that included queer Asian-
Australians stories (Low 2008; Law 2008; Ayres 2008). Peril published her original
introduction in 2008.
In Peril, we have featured articles that analyse, interrogate, subvert and disrupt
assumptions of Asian-Australian identities and representation. The magazine primar-
ily features work by Asian-Australians, however Peril also accepts work by non-
Asian-Australians as long as the work relates to Asian-Australian interest. For
example, in Issue 8, the theme was “Why are people so unkind?” This quote came
directly from legendary Sri Lankan Malaysian Australian singer, Kamahl, from a line
in a song that he is best known by. In his interview with Peril, Kamahl talked about his
extraordinary career in show business, while also divulging personal experiences of
racism in the industry (Quan 2009). Other content included Owen Leong’s interviews
with Japanese-based artist Pyuupiru who powerfully documented her experience of
sex reassignment surgery and another was with emerging artist Haruka Yamada,
whose work explored female fantasy, cross-dressing and sexuality (Leong 2009a, b).
Low features an interview with anti-racist, queer, cabaret troupe, the Ladies of Colour
Agency (Low 2009). The poetry submissions were overwhelmingly represented by
viewpoints about race and racism in Australia. Pung’s original introduction, as dis-
cussed above, is published in this edition. Benjamin Law, a Chinese-Australian author
who had recently released his second book Gaysia, about his travels in queer com-
munities in South, East and South-East Asia, wrote a discursive piece on ultra-conser-
vative Filipino-American media commentator, Michelle Malkin who, while having
experienced racism herself, has advocated racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims post
9/11 and “has also referred on one occasion to her ‘fellow Asian-Americans’ as ‘dish-
washers’ and ‘people who can’t even speak English’” (Law 2009).
While Peril from inception had always been inclusive of sexual and gender
diversity in terms of content and representation, this understanding and prime objec-
tive was tested when a person involved with the development and production of
Peril had, after 1 year of involvement, raised her discomfort in working on Peril
projects which promoted queer agendas. Her reasoning stemmed from a religious
moral and ethical framework whereby sex was only to be between a man and a
woman, not before or outside marriage. To justify her queerphobia however, she
was happy for Peril to be queer-friendly. The board and editors discussed her con-
cerns at great length over a few weeks. Yet, they could not see where the boundary
lay between the “queer-friendly” and “promoting a queer agenda” on the spectrum.
The claim that there can be a difference between “queer-friendly” and “promoting a
queer agenda” was problematic. How can there be a queer agenda when as a society
we are constantly surrounded by propaganda that is heterosexist, transphobic and
queerphobic? In the end, we agreed that Peril’s editorial policy since the beginning
has been to embrace diversity and in particular marginalised voices such as queer
voices, and she had to decide whether she could work with us from that standpoint.
She ended up handing in her resignation. In Peril’s mission statement, we now
explicitly state that we are inclusive of people of diverse sexualities and genders.3
11.6 Multicultural Does Mean Multisexual

and Multigendered, Just as Advocacy Does Mean
Academic!
Multicultural community and organization leaders can play vital roles in encourag-
ing the recognition, reclaiming and emergence of local, national and global multi-
cultural queer persons, organizations, communities, histories and issues in their
policies, programmes, and practices. In this chapter, we have discussed and demon-
strated how multiculturalism is not about exclusionary, homogenising and assimila-
tive policies and practices that deny, exclude and separate (see also Chap. 2 on this
point). To continue to ignore the relevance and importance of the interweaving of
sexuality, gender and ethnicity is to continue to allow GLBTIQ members of multi-
cultural, multifaith communities to suffer from silence, isolation, and verbal, emo-
tional, psychological and physical violence. By upholding a heteronormative and
gendernormative version of the migrant/refugee story as the “authentic” and only
narrative, and by dismissing any attempts to challenge homophobia and transphobia
as racist or in contravention of multicultural rights, is to condone oppressions, to be
oppressors, even as we cry out against being oppressed (Freire 1990).
This chapter addresses the reality that within the mainstream multicultural
sphere, sexual and gender diverse identities are excluded, invisibilised and forgot-
ten, not always intentionally. We have provided a thorough assessment, critique and
analysis of this here, drawing from available theoretical discussions, our own expe-
riences and work. Our participation in the symposium “Reclaiming Multiculturalism:
Global Citizenship and Ethical Engagement with Diversity” and subsequent author-
ing of this chapter directly speaks to this absence.
We have provided examples of Australian empirical research reports and
resources and where to find them. Many of them are community-based and mention
the paucity of research in the area of multicultural queer. We have aligned ourselves
with the theories of reclaiming multiculturalism and the emergence of multicultural
queer communities and identities in Australia. This scholarly field of research of
3
In the international realm, we also wish to acknowledge an online English-language website that
engages with the intersections of gender/sexuality and/queer identities, Fridae, that publishes work
from within the Asian region and the diaspora.
intersectionalities and the multiplicity of identities in relation to queer subjectivities

is an “emergent” area that requires far more theorisation. Indeed, we acknowledge
that the theoretical mestizaje/borderland work of, Pallotta-Chiarolli, is one of the
few available in Australia, and requires critique, development and broader engage-
ment by more scholars. As Low reflected:
As the current body of work is young and still at the grassroots, the theory is emerging as we
live it. For example, it was only a decade ago that the peak body for individuals/groups from
a Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer multicultural background—
AGMC—was established. (Personal communication Dec 2014)
Thus, the theoretical frameworks, such as the work of Anzaldua (1987), are
emerging and evolving within an Australian diasporic and multicultural context.
Yet, as Low has reflected from her experience writing and editing for online publi-
cations, “the mainstream is only now catching up with the discourse on the multiplic-
ity of identities and intersectionalities when the work has been in the arts (for e.g.
William Yang’s Sadness which had iterations as a performance (1992), book (1996)
and documentary (1999), Christos Tsiolkas’ (1995) Loaded and the subsequent film
Head On (1998), grassroots communities and on the internet for years”.
We conclude with the words of Trinh who warned over 20 years ago that unless
we engage with the heterogeneity in our societies, we reduce the efficacy and beauty
of “the creative interval” that would further expand and affirm our multiculturalism
in policy, theory, research and action. The “creative interval” is made up of spaces
and places to be creative, subversive, resistant, where new journeys and ways of
seeing or being act against and between dominant problematic discourses:
as long as the complexity and difficulty of engaging with
the diversely hybrid experiences of heterogenous contemporary
societies are denied and not dealt with, […] the creative interval
is dangerously reduced to non-existence. (1991: 229)
We see our advocacy work on intersectionalities and multiple identities as interwo-
ven with our academic work on intersectionalities and multiple identities, thereby
situating ourselves in the borderlands of “the creative interval”.
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Chapter 12
Migrant Youth and Social Policy
in Multicultural Australia: Exploring
Cross-Cultural Networking
Libby Effeney, Fethi Mansouri, and Maša Mikola
Abstract This chapter explores the extent to which the direction of Australia’s
official multicultural and civic integration policies, reflects the social attitudes and
networking practices of migrant youth. The chapter pays particular attention to the
Federal Government’s “Anti-Racism Strategy” announced in 2012 as part of its
Multicultural Policy. On a theoretical level, direct efforts to mitigate racism have the
potential to augment strategies that reaffirm pluralism and address disadvantage
often associated with the migrant experience. On an empirical level, it is important
to explore the extent to which such top-level discourses have actual founding in the
social lives of migrant youth. Therefore this chapter presents the empirical findings
of an empirical longitudinal on “Social Networks, Belonging and Active Citizenship
among Migrant Youth” (Australian Research Council Linkage project 2009–2013).
Migrant youth in this study pointed to a number of instances of racism, which act as
significant barriers to cross-cultural networking. Analysis of the data shows, among
other things, that there is a persistent tendency among migrant youth to point to their
social distance from the metaphorical “Aussie Aussie” people of Anglo origins who
are perceived as symbolising Australia’s mainstream. Such manifestations of racial
discrimination preclude the emergence of a genuinely inclusive society that sup-
ports and nurtures cultural diversity as a significant part of the Australian national
identity, as well as the stated objectives of its social policy repertoire.
Keywords Multicultural policy • Multiculturalism • Civic integration • Social

inclusion • Anti-racism strategy • Migrant youth • Racism
L. Effeney (*) • F. Mansouri

Alfred Deakin Institute For Citizenship and Globalisation,
Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
e-mail: leffeney@deakin.edu.au; fethi.mansouri@deakin.edu.au
M. Mikola
Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16003-0_12
186 L. Effeney et al.
12.1 Introduction
Multicultural Policy and the Social Inclusion Agenda were key pillars of the
Australian Labor Government’s (2007–2013) social policy repertoire.1 They repre-
sent a blended approach to diversity that balances civic integrationist and multicul-
tural perspectives (Banting and Kymlicka 2013) (see also Chap. 10). Broadly, the
policies were aimed at fostering positive community relations by supporting cul-
tural diversity and addressing socioeconomic disadvantage (see Chap. 4 for an argu-
ment in favour of this approach). Both of these policies identified young people as
a critical demographic focus for their implementation (DIAC 2011; ASIB 2012).
Despite this apparent focus, little has been done to empirically gauge their actual
relevance and efficacy in regards to their key target group, migrant youth. This
paper begins to fill this gap by exploring the extent to which top-level social policy
discourses reflect and resonate with the social attitudes and networking practices of
migrant youth. It is premised on the idea that empirical dynamics are the best touch-
stone for effective social policy. Specifically, this chapter looks at the extent to
which the purported aims of the Labor Government’s Multicultural and Social
Inclusion policies speak to the cross-cultural networking practices of migrant youth
in Australia. The analysis draws upon data collected as part of the ARC (Australian
Research Council) Linkage Project (2009–2013) “Social Networks, Belonging and
Active Citizenship among Migrant Youth” (Mansouri et al. 2013).
The first part of this chapter briefly outlines the Labor Government’s Multicultural
Policy and Social Inclusion Agenda, and critically appraises their compatibility,
given that they are supposed to act in the context of, and in concert with, one another.
Conceding that there is a measure of incompatibility between the two approaches, it
goes on to argue that the new “Anti-Racism Strategy” announced in 2012, repre-
sents a practical step towards bridging the two policies, and promoting a more
socioeconomically inclusive, multicultural Australia. The chapter will then anchor
this discussion in an analysis of data from the ARC study. It explores the respon-
dents’ cross-cultural networking practices, and considers whether these practices
resonate with the Multicultural and Social Inclusion polices. Specifically, the data is
analysed in order to gauge community engagement and participation—which are
key indicators used to measure civic integration, as espoused by the Social Inclusion
agenda—and cross-cultural connections (an important component of the
Multicultural Policy) among the migrant youth. The analysis will elucidate migrant
youths’ perspectives on whether Social Inclusion and Multicultural parameters
facilitate actual feelings of belonging and engagement in the Australian social
milieu as a whole.
1
With the election of the conservative government under Prime Minister Tony Abbott in September
2013 the Social Inclusion Unit was disbanded, but the Multicultural Policy, The People of Australia,
remains in place. The clear direction to be taken by the new government is yet to be elucidated, and
so this chapter will concern itself with social policy under the former Labor Government.
12 Migrant Youth and Social Policy in Multicultural Australia: Exploring… 187
12.2 Multiculturalism and Social Inclusion in Australia
Since the early 1970s Multicultural policy has been applied as a means of address-
ing cultural diversity in Australia. Over time, multiculturalism as “a set of practical
policies aimed variously at improving the absorption of migrants and harmoniously
integrating a culturally diverse society around liberal democratic values” (Brahm
Levey 2007: 1) has taken on symbolic significance in debates about Australian
national identity. Such embroilment in issues of national identity has tended to com-
promise multiculturalism as a policy agenda and call into question its utility.
Political retreat from multiculturalism in the 1990s was backed up by distrust in
aspects of multicultural policies by social critics and political analysts who argued
that it is divisive (Brahm Levey 2007) and works against the harmonious integration
of migrants (Modood 2007). As the Howard conservative government came to aban-
don its rhetorical use of “multiculturalism” in the late 1990s, civic integrationist
notions such as citizenship, social cohesion and integration were touted as viable
alternatives for government focus (see Chap. 10). In such an atmosphere, the newly
elected Labour Government of 2007 announced the Social Inclusion Agenda as a
key social policy with an all of government approach. It did so in concert with a
reaffirmation of Multicultural Policy in 2011.
In recent years, Australia’s Multicultural Policy and Social Inclusion Agenda
have developed in line with critiques from academics and practitioners, who argue
that they fail to work in concert to address the specific disadvantage resulting from
the migrant experience (Boese and Phillips 2011). In particular, these critiques point
to entrenched processes of racially and culturally based exclusion in Australia. They
argue for the need to challenge racism and discrimination directly, in order for the
blended policy approach—which layers multicultural policy and a civic integration-
ist agenda—to remain apace with the needs of such a diverse country (Mansouri
2011; Vasta 2007; Dunn and Nelson 2011; Berman and Paradies 2010). The recent
Anti-Racism Strategy was developed in response to these critiques and represents a
potentially significant step towards encouraging genuine multicultural inclusion
(AHRC 2012b).
12.2.1 Australia’s Multicultural Policy
There were many reasons for the introduction of multiculturalism in the 1970s by
the Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, and its later implementation under the
Liberal government of Malcolm Fraser. A multicultural reality, or what Pardy and
Lee (2011: 298) call “descriptive” multiculturalism was one of these reasons.
Indeed, in 1967, new immigrants in Australia began lobbying the government for
their cultural, ethnic and linguistic rights to be supported by funding for service
provision. Also in this year, Australian Indigenous citizens were given full voting
rights. By the early 1970s, thanks to movements in the US and South Africa, it had
become untenable internationally and in Australia to keep explicit racial clauses in

government policies. At the ceremony proclaiming the Racial Discrimination Act of
1975, the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam referred to Australia as a “multicultural
nation” for the first time in the history of federated Australia. And so it was, in 1978,
under the Government of Malcom Fraser, that the first Multicultural Policy was
implemented. The term multiculturalism, defined as “cultural pluralism” by the
Fraser government had “an attendant focus on social cohesion” (Boese and Philips
2011: 190). Yet, despite these developments, race and racism did not cease to exist
on a prescriptive level in all of Australia’s policies and social institutions, nor at the
normative level of the national ethos (Pardy and Lee 2011: 298).
From its inception, multiculturalism as a government policy was concerned
with managing migrant settlement and cultural diversity. Policymakers adopted
an Access and Equity approach as expounded in the Galbally Report of 1978 (see
also Chap. 13), which acknowledged the significant settlement needs of migrants
and highlighted the need to foster multiculturalism through ethnic communities
and all levels of government. It called for a focus on the recognition of heritage
culture, equal opportunity and adequate services for migrants (Galbally 1978). In
this period, multicultural policy was premised on a broader social justice agenda
designed to address the social and economic disadvantages experienced by
recently arrived migrants (see Chap. 13). Many support services for migrants
were established, including language and social services, workplace and welfare
assistance, and access to media in the first languages of migrants (Special
Broadcasting Services). In short order, superficial understandings of culture “led
to celebrations of exotic food and folkloric traditions in schools, local government
services, state-funded cultural production, and many other spheres” (Poynting
and Mason 2008: 235; see also Chap. 13). In this context, resentment grew among
white Australians of British descent who became concerned with “cultural extinc-
tion” (Hage 2003: 61) or “cultural invisibility”. A growing popular backlash
against multiculturalism started to emerge and with a loss of bipartisan support
for the policy during the 1990s, Australian government rhetoric began to shift (see
also Chap. 10).
At the turn of the century, in reaction to the symbolic significance that multicul-
turalism came to have in debates about what it means to be Australian, the conserva-
tive Howard government sought to underplay its importance by removing it from
government use. As Mansouri noted, the primary, popular critique levelled at mul-
ticulturalism at this time was “that migrants have been able to access the rights
associated with Australian citizenship and more broadly the Australian way of life
without having to assume the social and civic responsibilities necessary to a cohe-
sive society” (2013: 4). In this atmosphere, Australia’s social policies for migrants
took a civic integrationist turn, beginning to emphasise notions of citizenship, social
cohesion and integration. This manifested as the “New Integrationism” (Poynting
and Mason 2008) of the Howard government, which focussed on “an assumed core
culture that saw it as binding the nation together—western civilization, English lan-
guage and Anglo-Saxon cultural roots” (Schech and Rainbird 2013; Tate 2009; see
also Chap. 10). In this spirit, official multicultural policy faded into rhetorical
obscurity in 2006, and a socially conservative civic integrationist agenda was pur-
sued. This culminated just a year later with the introduction of the citizenship test,
representing what some describe as an attempt to tie a national character to the
prerogatives of government and “dictate the cultural choices of Australians in civil
society in the name of ‘our values’” (Brahm Levey 2007: 10).
On 16 February 2011, after more than a decade of the perceived marginalisation
of multiculturalism from politics—what has been dubbed a “retreat from multicul-
turalism” (Joppke 2004; Uberoi and Modood 2013; Banting and Kymlicka 2013)—
the Labor government announced “The People of Australia” the country’s first
official multicultural policy since 2006. This announcement reaffirmed the Federal
Government’s commitment to multiculturalism. Then minister for Immigration,
Chris Bowen, publicly announced in an address to the Sydney Institute, that he is
“not afraid to use the word multiculturalism” and is “proud of what it means to
Australian life” (Bowen 2011). He also argued for the distinctiveness of Australia’s
multiculturalism, or what he described as “the genius of Australian multicultural-
ism” (2011). This latest articulation of multicultural policy is underpinned by four
principles: celebrating and valuing diversity; maintaining social cohesion; commu-
nicating the benefits of Australia’s diversity; and responding to intolerance and dis-
crimination. The five key initiatives of this policy are the establishment of the
Australian Multicultural Council (AMC); the National Anti-Racism Partnership
and Strategy; Access and Equity Strategy; Multicultural Art and Festivals Grants;
and the Multicultural Youth Sports Partnership Program (DIAC 2011).
Whilst welcoming the Government’s reaffirmation and commitment to multicul-
turalism, some critics warn that the increased complexity arising from the plurality
of social contexts and negotiations of differences is often absent from policy and
programs aimed at supporting cultural diversity (Noble 2011; Walsh 2012). Noble
argues that diversity is most often assumed on the basis of the number of ethnic
groups born overseas or arriving in Australia, but that there is little examination of
the intermingling “that ensues, [so] we are left with the sense of diversity as the
juxtaposition of enduring differences” (2011: 830). Academics and practitioners
who conceptualise multiculturalism argue that there is a need for deeper multicul-
turalism; they argue for “recognition” (Fraser 1995) but they also argue for broader,
socioeconomic justice and “redistribution” of capital (as per the Galbally report), as
well as the need for genuine and substantive political “representation” of culturally
diverse and marginalised groups (Mansouri 2013)2 (see also Chap. 13 on “critical
multiculturalism”). A deeper multicultural policy that is cognizant of every migrant’s
agency, challenges racism and systemic discrimination, and promotes anti-racism
initiatives.
In line with this, in August 2012, the Labor government announced the National
Anti-Racism Strategy, which was launched under the slogan “Racism. It stops with
me” (AHRC 2012a). Its main aim is to encourage all Australians to reflect on rac-
ism. It focuses on public awareness, education resources and youth engagement.
2
This may be dubbed the three Rs of legitimate democratic governance of culturally diverse or
‘multicultural’ societies such as Australia.
The Strategy suggests that racism can take many forms, whether it is systemic,
institutional or interpersonal. The forward to the strategy states, “we all have a role
to play in taking action against racism wherever we see it” (Szoke in Australian
Human Right Commission 2012). Essentially, the strategy promotes individual
responsibility. It acknowledges the distinct disadvantage resulting from the migrant
experience, and that government services and programs must be responsive to the
needs of culturally diverse communities. This may be seen as a significant step in
bringing discussions of race, racism and issues of difference and barriers to socio-
economic inclusion in Australia into the mainstream. Beyond such recognition,
however, exactly how this policy is to be executed by the government remains to be
seen.
12.2.2 Australia’s Social Inclusion Agenda (2007–2013)
The Social Inclusion Agenda was announced in December 2007 by the newly
elected Labor government under Kevin Rudd. It was a “whole of government” pol-
icy aimed at addressing persistent socioeconomic disadvantage across Australian
society. Essentially, this is a civic integrationist agenda, which has conceptual and
practical antecedents in Hawke-era “Social Justice”, Keating-era “Social Justice
cum Cosmopolitanism” and Howard-era “Social Cohesion” (Jakubowicz 2010).
The key aspirational principles of this Agenda are to adopt an integrated approach
to reduce disadvantage, increase social, civil and economic participation as well as
provide a greater voice and opportunity for people. Social Inclusion policy is said to
operate in three ways: improving the quality of essential government services par-
ticularly in areas like education and training, employment, health and housing;
ensuring those services work more effectively in the most disadvantaged communi-
ties; and developing partnerships between governments, businesses, not-for-profit
organisations and the community and engaging disadvantaged communities to help
find solutions to address their particular needs. The indicators used to measure the
outcomes of the policy’s objectives are: Resources, Participation and Multiple and
Entrenched Disadvantage.
The introduction of the discourse of social inclusion by the Rudd and Gillard
governments since 2007 marks an attempted third way between the politics of mul-
ticulturalism and its implied recognition of ethnic/racial disadvantage and the redis-
tributive logic of the politics of social cohesion associated with the national values
so effectively touted in the preceding Howard era (Chiro 2011). Social inclusion as
a policy was directed toward encouraging community belonging, with “the emo-
tional force of belonging [becoming] tied to prescribed core national values” (Harris
and Williams 2003: 216). In other words, it is argued that implicit in the Social
Inclusion approach is the idea that while anyone can potentially belong, “belonging
is conditional to ‘the Australian way’ a standard that cannot be met through passing
a dictation test—or even by adopting a prescribed lifestyle, though that comes
closer” (Harris and Williams 2003: 216).
The Social Inclusion Agenda focused on undifferentiated citizens/residents and

largely ignored or failed to name multicultural issues. Only one of “the eleven aspi-
rational principles elucidated in Social Inclusion Principles for Australia (2009), is
concerned with cultural and linguistic diversity” (Chiro 2011: 27). Critiques of
Social Inclusion often point to its broad and vague scope and its limited tangible
impact. Some scholars argue that the Agenda is “meaningless” and used “as a pana-
cea answer to a myriad of problems, while turning a blind eye to the very processes
of racially or culturally based exclusion” (Boese and Philips 2011: 193; Vasta 2007).
Overall, while the primary aim of this agenda is to “ensure social and economic
outcomes”, its approach largely ignores demonstrable processes of racialised
disadvantage.
12.2.3 The Latest Buzzwords of Social Policy: Anti-racism

and Social Networks
Much scholarly critique posits that the Australian Government’s Multicultural and
Social Inclusion policies do not speak to one another, nor do they act in concert for
a common purpose. Poynting and Mason argue that there has been a “shift from
multiculturalism as a state assisted and demanded by immigrant communities to
‘new integrationism’ as a state imposed and demanded of immigrant communities”
(2008: 232). The fallout from such a shift is supposed to be covered by the Social
Inclusion Agenda. Yet, as contributors to this volume Boese and Philips (2011; and
see Chap. 13) poignantly ask, what does a Social Inclusion Agenda have to offer
multicultural Australia if it is not cognisant, in its premises, of entrenched, racialised
processes of social exclusion in the country? Beyond mere lip service in the Social
Inclusion Agenda, multiculturalism requires recognition of disadvantages faced by
newly-arrived, as well as second- and third-generation migrants. Indeed, the ideal of
a multicultural society is to deepen universal solidarity, and celebrate social inclu-
sion, in part, as an achievement of diversity.
On this note, while the Anti-Racism Strategy is an initiative under the
Multicultural Policy banner, it is heavily imbued with the premises and aims that
inform the Social Inclusion Agenda. Indeed, not only does it call for full recogni-
tion of racialised disadvantage, but it also recognises the need to couple this with a
focus on employment and education, access and equity. It states that “[Racism]
works against our goal of building a fair, inclusive community” (AHRC 2012a: 5).
The Government Strategy defines racism in the following way: “It often manifests
through unconscious bias or prejudice. On a structural level, racism serves to per-
petuate inequalities in access to power, resources and opportunities across racial
and ethnic groups” (AHRC 2012a: 4). Such recognition clearly states the need to
address racism and intolerance in order to achieve “social inclusion” for all in
Australia. In terms of policy, this may tentatively be seen as a theoretical step
toward more substantively bridging (and effectively blending) multicultural and
civic integrationist approaches.
But as some have argued, a critical reflection on the totality of policies, programs
and strategies is needed in order to change the broader social discourse on diversity,
inclusion, disadvantage and racism. Such reflection may provide insight into “the
overt and covert racism within institutions and in everyday experience” (Berman
and Paradies 2010: 221). On a theoretical level, the Anti-Racism Strategy’s direct
effort to mitigate racism does this; it was borne of critical reflections on the layered
multicultural and civic integrationist trends in Australia’s governance of diversity,
and has the potential to augment strategies that reaffirm pluralism and address dis-
advantage often resulting from the migrant experience. Yet, while racism has been
made explicit in the social policy agenda of the federal government, it remains to be
seen how this strategy will be affected at a grass roots level. In saying this, one key
strategy of the Government’s social policies that has been touted over the past
decade at both federal and state levels3 is encouraging young people to participate
in a range of social networks.
In order to explore the relevance of this policy trajectory, and its attendant focus
on participation in social networks, on the lives of migrant youth, this paper analy-
ses and discusses data collected on the cross-cultural networking practices of this
key demographic. Stemming from a social capital approach to civic integration,
which has gained much traction in Australia and elsewhere, there has been a sug-
gested link between engagement in diverse networks and broader social cohesion.
Such a premise is particularly visible in the Social Inclusion Agenda, which utilises
parameters linked to individuals’ abilities to network and act socially, such as par-
ticipation and engagement, to measure policy outcomes. Policy documents tend to
link low levels of participation and engagement to structural and entrenched disad-
vantage.4 The Multicultural policy highlights inter- and cross-cultural social net-
works as a key means to celebrate diversity and encourage substantive multicultural
inclusion. And yet, recent reports on network formation and engagement trends
amongst culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) populations suggest that
migrants and refugees, as well as young people from CALD backgrounds, engage
predominantly with ethnically homogenous groups (Willoughby 2007). The 2010
Australian Bureau of Statistics report (2010) also reveals that, in friendship groups,
73 % of respondents have friends of the same ethnic network. For the purposes of
this paper, the data is analysed in order to gauge the attitudes of migrant youth
toward cross-cultural networking and the behavioural manifestations of these
perceptions, that is, their level of participation and engagement.
3
In policy terms, engagement with social networks is seen as a key means of promoting and
achieving social inclusion, and cross-cultural networks in particular are promoted by the People of
Australia Multicultural Policy (as well as at the state level in Victoria in the 2009 Victorian
Multicultural Policy “All of Us”, which endorses commitment to “bringing together people across
cultures and faiths” and in Queensland’s Multicultural Policy (2011); particularly the “Inclusive
Communities” initiative which advocates for young people’s access to and participation in a range
of multicultural networks).
4
After the implementation of the Social Inclusion Agenda in 2009, the Commonwealth Government
developed a national Social Inclusion Measurement and Reporting Strategy to monitor social
exclusion.
12.3 Methodology
The ARC project Social Networks, Belonging and Active Citizenship among
Migrant Youth5 (2009–2013) explored the social “integration” of migrant young
people in Australia. For the purposes of this study “integration” is understood in
ideal terms as a process through which individuals and groups are able to maintain
their cultural identity while actively participating in the larger societal framework
(Korac 2003; Ager and Strang 2008). Specifically, the study focussed on the multi-
ple social networks, both formal and informal, and the networking practices of the
participants (Mansouri et al. 2013). The project was carried out in collaboration
with two industry partners (the Centre for Multicultural Youth and the Australian
Red Cross). It employed a triangulated design, using secondary data analysis
together with the generation of qualitative and quantitative data sets.
Participants included young people from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds,
and who spoke a variety of languages. They had varying lengths of residency and/
or citizenship and arrived to Australia via various migration pathways. The partici-
pants were residing in Melbourne, Victoria or in Brisbane, Queensland. The project
specifically focused on youth of African, Arabic-speaking and Pacific Island back-
grounds. These groups have often been linked to a heightened sense of marginalisa-
tion (Mansouri 2005; Mansouri and Kamp 2007; Mansouri and Marotta 2012) and
have been given negative media attention (Windle 2008; Nunn 2010; Nolan et al.
2011), particularly in respect to crime and public disorder (White et al. 1999) (see
also Chap. 5). They have been described as problematic, unable to integrate and
potentially a major threat to social cohesion in Australia.
The quantitative data analysed in this study comes from a Formal and Informal
Social Networks survey, which was designed to elicit data that gives a broad picture
of the networking practices of the sample group. The survey was administered to
484 respondents. It includes empirical indicators commonly used in social capital
research, and explores quantitative engagement in various social networks, as well
as norms of trust and reciprocity. The survey data was subjected to descriptive sta-
tistical analysis using SPSS software. In addition to the quantitative surveys, quali-
tative interviews and focus groups were conducted with 103 young people. The
interview questions were designed primarily to elicit data about the meanings that
individuals ascribe to their choice of social networking behaviour. The qualitative
data was subjected to systematic thematic content analysis with the help of NVivo
software. For the purposes of this paper, one specific area of the dataset is explored;
the participants’ cross-cultural networking practices. First it collates and presents a
5
The term “migrant youth” in the project was defined as an age-specific category (15–23 years of
age) comprising Australian and overseas-born youth. Such a definition of migrant youth cuts
across generational definitions of migrants (Skrbis et al. 2007) and practitioners’ requirements for
a comprehensive and inclusive treatment of the category of youth that responds to their everyday
realities. It is during late adolescence and early adulthood that individuals commence the process
of integrating identities into coherent wholes (Damon and Hart 1988) and developing a sense of
self.
summary of the relevant survey and interview data. It then analyses the material in
order to gauge the most dominant theme espoused by the participants in terms of
their attitudes toward cross-cultural networking and the behavioural manifestations
of these perceptions.
12.4 Findings
12.4.1 Trends in Cross-Cultural Networking
The quantitative datasets suggest that all three participant groups have a desire for
cross-cultural engagement, even if, for the majority, their current social networks
are ethno-specific. The survey gauged participants’ attitudes to cross-cultural
engagement by asking whether they like being involved in activities happening out-
side of their family or ethnic group. Participants could choose “yes”, “no” or “some-
times” as their response. The African and Pacific Island participants displayed the
greatest interest in cross-cultural networking. 55.1 % or Africans responded “yes”,
with 37.1 % responding “sometimes”. Of the Pacific Island participants, 55 %
responded “yes” and 38.4 % responded “sometimes”. Among Arabic speaking
youth, interest in cross-cultural engagement was lower. 34.3 % responded “yes” and
47.6 % responded “sometimes”, leaving nearly a fifth of the Arabic-speaking survey
sample, or 18 %, saying they do not like to socialise outside their family or ethnic
group.
Participants’ interest in cross-cultural activities increases with the length of time
spent in Australia. Overall, 53.5 % of newly arrived participants, 58.6 % of partici-
pants who have lived in Australia for 6–10 years and 60 % of those that have lived
in Australia for over 11 years indicated that they are interested in participating in
cross-cultural networks. As per the findings above, interest among Arabic-speakers
was lower yet indicative of this trend; 36.4 % of the newly arrived like taking part
in activities outside of their family/ethnic group, this figure increases to 40 % for
those that have lived in Australia for 6–10 years, and to 42.9 % for those who have
lived in Australia for more than 11 years. A similar trend, but on a smaller scale,
occurs amongst Pacific Islanders. Interestingly, only 29.8 % of those Arabic-
speakers born in Australia are interested in participating; a finding that will receive
further attention in analysis below of the interview and focus group data.
For the Arabic-speaking group, gender also emerged as a significant factor for
cross-cultural engagement. Only 26.6 % of Arabic-speaking males indicated that
they like to be involved in cross-cultural activities. Among the females however,
41.4 % like to be involved. In comparison, for Pacific Islander and African partici-
pants, gender does not represent a significant factor in the participants’ desire to
engage cross-culturally. The reasons for Arabic-speaking young men—and in par-
ticular more recent arrivals to Australia—not forming as many cross-cultural net-
works as young people in other groups, are multifarious. Lower levels of trust may
have influenced this outcome, as Arabic-speakers displayed the lowest levels of
trust of all three groups. The most common response given by the Arabic-speaking
participants—38.6 %—to the survey question about trust was that they “can’t trust
anyone”. 33.1 % of the Arabic-speaking participants said that people can be trusted.
This is in contrast to the Pacific Islander group, of which a majority of 58.9 % said
that “people can be trusted” and only 14.6 % said that they “can’t trust anyone”.
The qualitative data highlights that young people usually engage in cross-cultural
networks strategically, with different reasons and motivations informing their deci-
sions for forming cross-cultural connections. For many African participants, for
instance, cross-cultural engagement represents a means to demonstrate what they
perceive as their cultural competency or proficiency in the Australian context. That
is, the more multicultural their networks are the more “Australian” they feel. This is
a case of “multiculturalism” being utilised as a space or notion that can be appropri-
ated by culturally or racially Othered or marginalised people to produce feelings of
belonging (Pardy and Lee 2011: 312) (see also Chap. 10). However, it appears that
young people also feel like they are first required to “make an effort” in what is
considered to be an Australian scene before proceeding to occupy a multicultural
space (similar findings are reported in Chap. 10); as if “multicultural” is somehow
founded by the designation “Australian”. Some young people speak specifically
about a desire or effort to “make Australian friends”:
The thing is, since I came to Australia I never spoke to a Sudanese or African. I don’t have
any Sudanese or African friends. I do interest in that but I was focused on the language first
because I don’t know how to speak English at all 18 months ago—so that’s the thing […].
Yeah, I’m just happy that all my friends are Australian. Even the guys that I live with.
(Male, 20, African, Melbourne)
For this young man, creating a space of belonging was premised on the act of
distancing himself from his particular cultural or ethnic identity and distancing him-
self from the language linked to his identity. He arrived to Australia on his own and
his decision to network with Anglo-Australians rather than with Sudanese was
influenced by the conditions presented to him upon his arrival. He was detained for
7 months on arrival and he made friends with visitors to the detention centre,6 which
continued after his release from detention.
For Pacific Islander youth, their desire for cross-cultural engagement was often a
reaction to the perceived homogeneity and insularity of the actual social networks
in which they actively engage. Many craved and celebrated intercultural under-
standing, and felt that “being multicultural” made you a “better person”, as evi-
denced one response:
I think now looking back, if we had stayed in New Zealand, I think I would have only been
hanging out with my kind of people—Pacific Islanders […] but we came here, and
Melbourne being a multicultural city, I’ve learnt about different cultures, and gained under-
standing about them, and I think that’s made me a better person. I have become more mul-
ticultural. (Female, 20, Pacific Islander, Melbourne)
6
Most of the people who visit detained asylum seekers in Melbourne are Anglo-Australians, who
do not know detainees prior to their detention, but get to know them through the volunteer net-
works that organise these visits.
As the quantitative data suggest, cross-cultural networking appears to be less of

a priority for the Arabic-speaking group, as they often felt that their culture and
religion is misunderstood in the national milieu. In saying that, participants did feel
that cross-cultural engagement was a good way for others to learn about their com-
munity, culture and religion. A strategy to counter stereotypes. As one participant
offered his idea about a possible interfaith initiative:
I was thinking we could invite other religions to come and see each other, like for example
invite churches to our mosque, like just to talk. (Male, 22, Arabic speaking focus group,
Brisbane)
Overall, the data shows that while the majority of participants’ desire for cross-
cultural engagement is strong, the cultural and/or religious composition of the par-
ticipants’ social networks is relatively homogenous. In trying to understand this
discrepancy between the participants’ attitudinal patterns and their relatively socio-
culturally isolated networking patterns, four major “barriers” to cross-cultural
engagement were identified; experiences of racism and exclusion, levels of trust,
being too busy and community expectations. While “being too busy” may be seen,
for the purposes of this paper, as a more functional reason for non-engagement,7 the
remaining three reasons relate closely to socially constructed, institutionalised and
systemic issues, which mediate the relations between culturally distinct persons and
groups in Australia. Indeed, racism, trust and community expectation are intimately
connected issues, yet it was racism (including stereotyping and discrimination),
reiterated in everyday occurrences in the lives of the youth (see also Chap. 10 on this
subject), that was consistently cited as a significant barrier to cross-cultural engage-
ment. Participants in all three groups reported a range of “exclusionary practices”
ranging from explicit, targeted racism to more implicit or covert discrimination or
exclusion, which in turn affects their willingness to participate in cross-cultural
networks.
12.4.2 Primary Barrier to Cross-Cultural Engagement:

Racism and Discrimination
Analysis of the data elicited in this study showed that the potentiality for cross-
cultural networking by migrant youth is foremost overshadowed by experiences
of racism. These experiences are most commonly linked to covert rather than
overt exclusion from everyday places by dominant groups in schools or on the
sports grounds. Compared to all the other places/social groupings/institutions
7
Noting that “being too busy” is often used as a general, evasive response when a task or activity
seems difficult or unattractive to pursue, and therefore may be bound up with issues of trust racism
and identity as well.
listed as options in the survey (ethnic community, recreational, religious, volun-

teer group and “other”), school represented the site where youth were most likely
to feel they did not belong (18.8 % of respondents said that sometimes they feel
they do not belong at school). Racist remarks were usually conveyed verbally and
in places where young people gathered on a daily basis, such as schools, the
streets and on public transport (these findings are repeated in a separate study
reported in Chap. 10 of this volume). The survey showed that in terms of belong-
ing, 17.6 % of respondents indicated that sometimes they feel like they do not
belong in Australia. More African and Arabic-speaking youth reported feeling a
sense of exclusion—19.2 % of Africans, nearly a quarter (22.4 %) of Arabic-
speakers and 10.6 % of Pacific Islanders said they sometimes feel they do not
belong in Australia.
Even though the indicators reporting general life satisfaction among migrant
youth showed that they are generally happy with their lives, and that they are well
connected and desire to network cross-culturally as well as within their own ethno-
culturally defined groups, reported feelings of belonging showed that their percep-
tion of their place in Australia is considerably different to their white counterparts.
One participant who was born in Australia and said she goes to school with many
“Aussie Aussies”, nevertheless noted, “No I don’t actually [have any Aussie friends].
I have one friend that’s Aussie Aussie […]” (Female, 18, Arabic-speaking,
Melbourne). Another young woman says she has “full white” friends, yet that they
do not see her as genuinely Australian, despite the fact that she feels no connection
with any socio-cultural context other than Australia:
It is a bit confusing because I think most people consider Australians to be white and so
when you have a background but you don’t know much about it so you consider yourself
Australian […]. I think they see themselves as Australian, the girls in my group who are full
white, and then they kinda see me as an islander or someone […] so they don’t really see
me as Australian. So yeah, I think it will take time for people to kind of […] cause they
probably think I don’t really feel myself as Australian, that I’m connected to my heritage—
but I’m not. (Female, 23, Pacific Islander, Melbourne)
This difference in perceptions between the young female participant and her
friends creates a paradox for the former. For while she was born in Australia, and
indicates that she feels no connection with another country or culture, her white
counterparts nonetheless perceive her as an “other”. This suggests a systemic and
entrenched rift based heavily on phenotypic attributes, and which naturally acts to
empower a sense of white cultural dominance.
In the interviews, instances of overt and covert racism were commonly reported.
In line with the survey findings, young people in the interviews talked most often
about incidents of exclusion based on race and culture that they came across daily,
most often in schools or in public spaces. A 16-year old Cook Islander for instance
mentioned:
Ah […] well it’s usually around um […] the Australian kids at school. Like if they’re doing
something and then I like […] wanna sorta just join in for a bit […] they all say like ‘ah no
you can’t do that’ and I’m like why, they say ‘coz do you see the people around you?’ and
I’m like yeah, and they’re like ‘you don’t belong’. And then I’m like ‘oh, bye’ and just walk
off and talk to my mate about it. (Male, 16, Pacific Islander, Melbourne)
African interviewees reported a range of “exclusionary practices” ranging from

explicit racism in public spaces and schools to more implicit racism, provoked by a
dialogue between systemic racism (for instance where they felt that they were not
successful in obtaining certain jobs or being promoted because of their race) and
internalised racism. These forms of racism were usually reported through young
people’s everyday experience.
In both samples, Melbourne and Brisbane, verbal assaults on the participants
most often occurred while using public transport or while occupying public spaces
(see also Chap. 10 on this issue). For instance, certain African participants reported
being told to “go home” or that “sickness comes from Africa”. Some African
interviewees talked about experiences of more hidden, covert racism, based on a
confluence of systemic, interpersonal and internalised racism, not based on overt
verbal slurs or assaults as such, but nevertheless experienced in everyday
situations.
I feel like any time I want to get a job in a retail job and I walk in […] it’s really […] I
dunno. Maybe it’s my colour. (Male, 19, African, Melbourne)
Yeah. If I feel like I go to an area that’s like, I dunno, full of white people or full of other
races besides mine, I feel very awkward. I don’t feel comfortable going through the shop-
ping centres or the streets or anything alone without someone from my ethnicity or cultural
background. (Male, 19, African, Melbourne)
Some Arabic-speaking interviewees also spoke about racist attitudes that made
them feel uncomfortable, patronised and excluded.
There are a lot of racial issues going on. It’s a stereotype thing basically […] some
people look at us like terrorists or something like that. (Male, 19, Arabic Speaking,
Brisbane)
Nothing direct, like name calling or group labelling, nothing direct. But there was
always that feeling that there was prejudice and a bit of, I don't know, yeah, you never felt—
I never felt accepted with that guy. There was always something different between me and
the other players in the team. (Male, 21, Arabic speaking, Brisbane)
Another instance of discrimination based on visible difference was obvious for

Muslim, Arabic-speaking women wearing the hijab. A number of participants said
they felt excluded in certain spaces or in certain suburbs. They felt people looking
at them weirdly or assuming they don’t speak the language.
I think it’s harder for girls wearing hijab. I find it with mum, like whenever we go shopping
people assume that she is somehow dumber or deaf […] that’s rude, offensive. (Female, 18,
Arabic-speaking, Melbourne)
The Arabic-speaking focus group in Melbourne involved three young women,

with very active lives and high-achieving academic performance. They pointed out
that it is not the existence of stereotypes in itself that is problematic, but the fact that
almost all stereotypes hold negative connotations. Pervasiveness of negative stereo-
types in schools and the constituent systemic racism, from which such stereotypes
are generated and maintained, can place constricting pressures on the academic
achievement of young people. One young woman noted:
Even if you do do well, they [teachers] don’t try extra hard with you, because they think that
you can’t achieve more than that. They think you’ve come from an awful place with no
technology, no information at all, that you just don’t know anything apart from farming.
(Female, 19, Arabic-speaking, Melbourne)
Opposing and countering stereotypes is difficult for young people, and it is a

slow process. Often the situation remains unchanged, not only because systemically
engrained racism does not permit changes, but also because it is “easier to just fit
into that stereotype, because you can’t find anything more”. Culturally homogenous
networks thus are a reality for these participants, because there is a strong desire to
fit in somewhere, not because groups would draw boundaries around their ethno-
racial groups with the aim to isolate themselves. Cross-cultural networks, even
though desirable, are often still impossible in practice for many of the migrant youth
participating in this study.
12.5 Conclusion
Reports focusing on the outcomes of network engagement and measuring success

of integration for so-called “marginalised” or “at-risk” groups are often parochial in
scope, largely ignoring that networks and network engagement are situational and
depend on all parties involved. This chapter has shown that there is a desire for
cross-cultural engagement and cross-cultural networks among migrant youth, yet
this does not necessarily translate into cross-cultural network engagement.
Furthermore, there are different motivations for young people to engage in cross-
cultural networks.
Policies and reports often assume that Australian society is primarily and fun-
damentally multicultural and that multiculturalism is a virtue one needs to aspire
to in order to be Australian. However, what the studies, programs and policies
focusing on settlement outcomes, such as Social Inclusion and Multicultural
Policies, often misread is that multicultural society is not only premised upon dis-
tinctive cultures and groups, but also that these cultures and groups can never be
essentialised. Inclusion approaches and parameters usually overlook the first and
second steps in achieving a productive and integrative multicultural model. The
first is the ease and certainty of belonging to one’s own culture. Until this comfort
of belonging is achieved, until the surety about it is attained, the road towards
multiculturality is little more than a road towards assimilation. The second step
that is often overlooked in inclusion approaches is the discourse of inclusion/
exclusion, which promotes an essentialised social and political understanding
about what constitutes the Australian state and identity. Attendant to this are the
micro-level, situational, communicative inclusion/exclusion norms played out in
everyday social life. When policies promote migrant backgrounds they often for-
get about complexities engrained in the process of belonging to a place one has left
and a place that one has arrived to. As many researches have shown, there are no
homogenous national migrant identities, as much as there isn’t one single
Australian identity. Negotiation of identities depends on factors that are beyond
outcomes of essentialised models of integrative approaches. This is especially true
for migrant youth.
While it is argued that the National Anti-Racism Strategy, as one of the key
initiatives of “The People of Australia” multicultural policy, will seek to consult
expertise, establish networks, enhance leadership capacities of government and
civic society and have common commitments in the development and implemen-
tation of social policy in this area, it is unclear how these points will actually
tackle racism and everyday racist practices, especially among young people. Even
though youth are one of the focus demographics of the Anti-Racism Strategy, and
some of the priority settings of the Strategy include schools, the online environ-
ment and sport, which are three areas where young people participate heavily.
While research in this area exists (Greco et al. 2010; Beelmann and Heinemann
2014), it remains unseen how the Strategy and the Multicultural policy more
broadly will come up with effective practical measures to deal with racist prac-
tices that many young people experience on an everyday basis in schools and
public places.
In terms of designing the direction and implementation of policies like the Anti-
racism Strategy, the findings of this study suggest that to successfully support
migrant youth in fostering cross-cultural engagement, the service design (and ser-
vice providers) must be cognisant of specific reasons behind young people’s mis-
trust or lessened desire to network cross-culturally. These reasons often arise from
specific situations linked to discrimination, exclusion and a denied sense of belong-
ing. As Philomena Essed argues in her exploration of everyday racism and its
reproduction through habitual practices, everyday racism concerns repetitive prac-
tices and consists of practices that can be generalized (1991: 3). As noted by
Bhavnani et al. (2005), ethnoracial discrimination is a social phenomenon repro-
duced through social and institutional practices and discourse and as such is mul-
tidimensional, context specific and changing. Ethnoracial discrimination and its
manifestations are fluid (Hollinsworth 1998), defined and intimately embedded in
the historical and contemporary context. It is both the social (discourse/institu-
tional processes) and cognitive (stereotyping) that reproduce ethnoracial discrimi-
nation (Van Dijk 1989).
As the findings of this chapter suggest, migrant youth are largely happy with
the multicultural status quo in Australia and are indeed “socially included”,
even when appraised according to the Social Inclusion measurement tools.
There is a tendency among young people in this study, however, to experience
social distance from “Aussie Aussies” in the Australian social context. This rep-
resents an inclusion/exclusion binary along racialised lines that is systemic and
chronically manifest in many social settings. Such systemic racialisation does
not necessarily negatively impact on the overall wellbeing of migrant youth
and their day-to-day life, but persists and lingers as a barrier to cross-cultural
networking, participation and full active citizenship for some. The question for
many young people remains as to how one can be socially included in Australia
despite being culturally and ethnically different from the “Aussie Aussies”. This
highlights the importance of the nature of the social space into which people are
to be included, and adds to the argument that it is not only social inclusion that
should be a whole-of-government approach; what is also needed is a more pro-
active multicultural state.
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Chapter 13
Multiculturalising at the Interface
of Policy and Practice
Martina Boese and Melissa Phillips
These were the sorts of things that migrant-support settlement

groups never talked about. Beyond the practical discussions
about groceries and doctors and English classes, there was no
other dialogue. She imagined support groups of a different kind.
A roomful of women of different generations and languages –
Armenians, Greeks, Vietnamese, Sudanese, Chinese – sitting in
an AA sort of circle, going on about the things that mattered
Alice Pung (2011)
Abstract Multiculturalism as a contemporary policy framework and practice has

been the subject of sustained criticism and debate. Our research on the resettlement
experiences of newly arrived migrants and refugees shows how Australian multicul-
turalism has become a limited symbolic cultural space where “ethnic Others” are
permitted to perform their minority ethnicity to the white ethnic majority group. We
argue that the official and public meanings of multiculturalism today remain con-
strained by its past, specifically the historical legacy of White Australia and the con-
tested but still entrenched remnants of the pressure to “assimilation”. As a result, new
arrivals and existing cultural Others are expected to gradually “blend in” – a euphe-
mism that in effect, veils a form of cultural assimilation. Based on our recent research
findings we argue that such a process occurs however alongside emerging practices
of active, reciprocal and ongoing cultural, political and social exchange within and
between all diverse communities of Australia. We term this more transformational
form of multiculturalism as “multiculturalising”. This notion points to a multi-lay-
ered and ongoing process of engagement and negotiation that involves new arrivals
M. Boese (*)
Centre for Applied Social Research, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
e-mail: martina.boese@rmit.edu.au
M. Phillips
School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia
e-mail: phim@unimelb.edu.au

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16003-0_13
206 M. Boese and M. Phillips
and long term residents alike and seeks to encapsulate some of the ways in which
multiculturalism operates across a variety of public and private settings in Australia.
Keywords Multiculturalism • Critical multiculturalism • Assimilation • Migrant

settlement • Refugee settlement • Rural Australia
From the ordinary and every day, to the celebratory and stereotypical, the word
“multiculturalism” conjures up different images and various understandings of the
lived experiences of people of diverse backgrounds living in Australia. It also
reflects a policy domain that at times is highly contested and controversial. Bringing
these two elements together, this chapter considers multiculturalism at a local level
through the lens of both ordinary lived experiences and government policies (on this
approach, see also Chap. 12). Drawing on research situated in regional Australia, a
location not always associated with multiculturalism, we contend that multicultur-
alising better explains the active process of engagement experienced at the local
level by community members – be they new arrivals or well established residents of
an area. It describes the dynamic interaction between policy and practice as a two-
way process that deserves more attention in future research on multiculturalism and
is best investigated through micro site examples.
Multiculturalism is a well-established policy framework that has become the
subject of renewed attention in Australia (Boese and Phillips 2011; Hage 1998,
2012; Jayasuriya 2008; Lopez 2002), as well as other countries of immigration such
as the UK and Canada (Ku 2011; Modood 2007; Parekh 2000). As a policy frame-
work, multiculturalism in Australia provides a way to:
[…] manage, foster and celebrate cultural diversity. It recognises the diversity of its different
cultures within the context of a society that not only respects its members’ rights to their
culture, faith and identity, but also increases their range of choices as well as contributing
to their development and well-being. (Babacan and Ben-Moshe 2008: 3)
Access to citizenship has been a central tenet of Australian multiculturalism

(Galligan and Roberts 2003) while anti-racism has been ostensibly absent from it
(Berman and Paradies 2010) until recently (see Chap. 12 on this point).
Multiculturalism in Australia is expressed through federal, state and local govern-
ment policies ranging from federal and state-level Multicultural Policies (DIAC
2011; VMC 2009), the establishment of Multicultural Councils to the implementa-
tion of local cultural diversity strategies. The plethora of policies and guidelines
addressing how “Australians live together” under a multicultural rubric are differen-
tiated from immigration policies determining the size and composition of annual
migrant intakes (Advisory Council on Multicultural Affairs 1988) (see also Chaps.
6, 10 and 12 on the policy dimensions of Australian multiculturalism).
Parallel to the design, implementation and ongoing reforms of these top-down
policy arrangements (AMAC 2010), multiculturalism occurs as a bottom-up pro-
cess and practice. This practice-oriented nature of multiculturalism has been
encapsulated in terms such as “everyday multiculturalism” (Harris 2009; Wise and
13 Multiculturalising at the Interface of Policy and Practice 207
Velayutham 2009; see also Chap. 10), the “multicultural real” (Hage 1998), “multi-
culturalism from below” (Werbner 2012) and “multiculturalism 2.0” (Macdonald
2012). Whilst distinctive, each of these concepts share an engagement with the
mundane and continuous nature of “doing multiculturalism”. To varying extent,
they also recognize the deeply political dimension of such a practice of multicultur-
alism. Noting that there can be no one blue-print for multiculturalism, even within
national borders, Werbner (2012: 200) suggests that:
Rather than thinking of multiculturalism, then, as a discourse that reifies culture, it needs to
be thought of as a politics of equal and just citizenship that bases itself on the right to be
‘different’ within a democratic political community […]. Without a struggle from below, it
seems it never will be.
This chapter engages with such a grounded and practice-focused perspective of

multiculturalism, as a “discourse as well as a policy” (Modood and Meer 2012: 240)
and as everyday practice and negotiation (Amin 2002; Wise and Velayutham 2009;
see also Chap. 10) in the context of regional and rural locations. Following histori-
cally predominant migration patterns, scholarship on multiculturalism has focused
on metropolitan locations. Drawing on research findings from a recently completed
project on the settlement experiences of recently arrived migrants in regional
and rural Australia, we explore how multiculturalism is experienced, interpreted
and embodied by new arrivals settling in regional Australia and by professionals
involved in settlement work in these locations. We argue that multiculturalism
remains a valuable framework for understanding contemporary Australian society,
but it needs to be understood as place-based, contingent practice that includes both
the mundane and the implementation of policy at the local level. We expand current
conceptions of everyday multiculturalism as dynamic and continuous processes
(Harris 2009; Wise and Velayutham 2009; Noble 2009; Colombo 2010) by high-
lighting the relevance of locally situated settlement stakeholders for a better under-
standing of the processes and practices that we refer to as multiculturalising.
13.1 Multiculturalism as Everyday Practice

and Performance
The notion of everyday multiculturalism has drawn attention to the situatedness of

multiculturalism in “Concrete situations of interactions where difference becomes,
at least for some of the actors involved, an important element in constructing social
reality and in the meaning attributed to it” (Colombo 2010: 258). Everyday multicul-
turalism occurs hence in “ordinary social spaces within which people of different
backgrounds encounter one another, and (as) mundane practices they construct and
draw on to manage these encounters” (Harris 2009: 188). It is this multiculturalism
as a “social fact” or “fact of life” which occurs when people from different cultural
backgrounds are “coming across, bumping into and sharing space” with each other
(Pardy and Lee 2011: 300) that has been cast as a practice in contrast to the
theoretical subject of multiculturalism that has been hotly debated and often
problematized in the realms of both policy and academia. Hage (1998) described this
multiculturalism as “multicultural Real” that exists regardless of multiculturalism
policy or its contestation, Noble’s (2009: 50–1) term “unpanicked multiculturalism”
similarly captures “the ways difference gets negotiated in everyday lives away from the
heat of moral panic and state- and media-driven anxieties about social cohesion”.
Recent claims of the “death” of multiculturalism by policy representatives, espe-
cially in Europe, have been interpreted as a new form of racism (Lentin and Titley
2011) whilst the alternative concept of interculturalism (Meer and Modood 2012;
Levey 2012) has been interpreted as attempt to sell the substance of multicultural-
ism in new clothes (Kymlicka 2012) (on the relationship between interculturalism
and multiculturalism see Chap. 9). These contestations highlight both the highly
politicised nature of the term and the importance of examining the meanings of
multiculturalism to its different protagonists, including policy makers as well as
those involved in the “doing of multiculturalism” on the ground such as settlement
workers. These debates also highlight the nature of multiculturalism as a compre-
hensive and ongoing project that includes intercultural dialogue and communication
(Modood and Meer 2012) as well as the affirmation and celebration of cultural
particularity.
Drawing on our research findings in regional Australia we argue that to under-
stand multiculturalism necessitates attention to its different dimensions in practice,
and in particular how these are negotiated in place-based dialogue, including between
local stakeholders in government and services, and in the locally-embedded, issue-
related processes of engagement and negotiation. Our intention is not to blur the
distinction between the governance and rhetoric of multiculturalism on the one hand
and the – seemingly parallel – everyday practice of multiculturalism on the other
hand. We introduce the notion multiculturalising as a process that is situated at the
interface of policy and everyday practice, of governance and ordinary interaction.
Celebratory rituals such as multicultural festivals and Harmony Day events are
often criticised for their inherent commodification and essentialisation of cultural
identities and differences, and their emphasis on superficial aspects of the supposed
cultural differences of ethnic groups (Phillips 2010). They tend to form part a mul-
ticulturalism that exhibits a managed cultural Other while disguising power rela-
tions, described by Hage (1998: 160) as the “postcolonial version of the colonial
fair”. This approach to multiculturalism has been countered by the notion of “criti-
cal multiculturalism” that “replaces cultural essentialism with a relational definition
of culture and cultural difference” (Awad 2011: 43). Cultural recognition and eco-
nomic redistribution are understood as central, interrelated elements in such a
structural-relational model of multiculturalism (see also Chaps. 4 and 12). Whether
aimed at achieving participatory parity (Fraser 2003) or justice based on an under-
standing of the structural relevance of cultural claims (Young 2000), critical multi-
culturalism departs from an understanding of cultural difference as either
exotically-attractive or socially-divisive. In this chapter, we posit multiculturalising
as a critical multicultural practice, different but not independent from a multicul-
tural policy discourse, which is often underpinned by an ethical judgment on the
equal value of different cultures (Taylor 1994). Rather than occurring through a
state-sponsored display and paternalistic celebration of cultural diversity,

multiculturalising is understood here as practice and performance that encompasses
both the engagement with, the negotiation and affirmation of, difference and diver-
sity that occur “when people are mixing” and the implementation of multicultural
policies at the local level.
In scholarship on multiculturalism scant attention has been paid so far to the
lived experience of newly arrived migrants and refugees settling into regional com-
munities. It is here, at the coal-face outside the cosmopolitan metropolis, that mul-
ticultural rhetoric is put to the test, and potentially turned into a useful vehicle to
“trouble” dominant norms through the repetition of “unruly articulations” of the
nation (as multicultural) (see Butler 1993; Dunn 2005). Through a site-specific
exploration of settlement with local residents, from service providers to newly
arrived migrants and refugees themselves, we will analyse different incarnations of
and perspectives on multiculturalism including the process of multiculturalising.
We suggest that multiculturalising is deeply interactive and relational, unsettling as
well as ordinary, and never complete. By drawing attention to the interaction
between individual community members from different domains as agents, manag-
ers and constituents of multiculturalism, we aim to challenge the apparent dichot-
omy between multicultural policies and their supposed success or failure and the
empirical reality of intersubjective everyday multiculturalism.
13.2 Multicultural Policies in the Australian Context
In contrast to some European countries, in Australia multiculturalism has more

recently been credited with minimising tensions (Soutphommasane 2012) and
lauded as a “success” (Bowen 2012) (see also Chap. 10). Even in those years where
multiculturalism was treated with contempt by federal government politicians (see
Costello 2006; see Chaps. 10 and 12), it contributed to the “branding” of states such
as Victoria, operating as a marketing ploy that provides a competitive edge (VMC
2009). Intergovernmental policy and coordination arrangements in this area remain
firmly embedded in federal government control with peripheral consultation on
either an ad hoc or specially appointed basis. Debates about the merits of intercul-
turalism and multiculturalism (Meer and Modood 2012) have been side-lined in
Australia in preference for a state-driven vision of accommodating a diverse society
(Levey 2012). Such diversity is attested in Census statistics and supported by Access
and Equity policies (see Chap. 12), with citizenship as the overarching principle of
society. As senior representative from the former Department of Immigration and
Citizenship (DIAC) explained in the interview:
In terms of the way the government is framing multicultural policy now, it’s about
recognizing the broad diversity that’s a fact of life in Australia now. So recognizing that
Australia is basically extremely culturally diverse, in comparison with say 50 or 60 years
ago. So that’s basically just that cultural diversity is a fact. The second thing is placing that
multiculturalism around a very, firmly embedding it in a citizenship framework. […]. So
that’s the sort of broad multicultural principles, freedom of cultural heritage expression
within those broad, we could call them Australian or Western liberal democratic, or social
democratic or whatever you want call it. Then you move on to the actual access and equity
principles […] this is where the sort of rubber hits the road in terms of what we do. (Senior
DIAC Representative)
From a policy perspective, the “rubber hits the road” as the above interviewee
describes, when multicultural policies are translated into action on access and
equity, aiming to ensure that government services do not discriminate on the basis
of race, gender or ethnicity. The 2012 Access and Equity Inquiry Panel Report spe-
cifically focused on Australian Government services to Australia’s so-called cultur-
ally and linguistically diverse (CALD) populations. This report cited lack of
engagement and communication with diverse communities as an issue, and recom-
mended “that there be a strong evidence base on the practical outcomes of these
policies and the effectiveness of interaction of Australian government services with
CALD communities and clients” (Access and Equity Inquiry Panel 2012: 57).
The recognition by government that newly arrived migrants require support to
achieve social and economic integration and the consequential statutory provision
of settlement assistance was central to Australian multiculturalism from early days.
A milestone in the provision of migrant settlement services was the 1978 Review of
Post-Arrival Programs and Services for Migrants known as the Galbally Report,
which recommended the provision of settlement services as part of a range of con-
crete measures to support a “multicultural attitude” (see also Chap. 12). The con-
crete form of provision has undergone changes since then but settlement services
remain a key expression of Australia’s multiculturalism, understood as an integra-
tive policy (Galligan et al. 2014). While major metropolitan centres continue to be
the primary destination for international migrants, demographers have highlighted
that “for the first time during the post-war era the growth of immigrant populations
has been greater outside of gateway cities than in them” (Hugo 2011: 152). Boosting
regional settlement has been a feature of the Sustainable Population Strategy for
Australia (DSEWPC 2011) and recent migration policy reforms at both the federal
and state level. Regional and rural settlement is considered to be beneficial for both
recent arrivals and the communities in which they settle.
13.3 Situating the Research: Settlement Experiences

of Visible Migrants and Refugees
The research presented here is based on selected findings from an Australian

Research Council funded Linkage Project, Visible Migrants and Refugees in
Regional and Rural Australia which examined the interrelated social, economic and
political factors that shape the resettlement experiences of recently arrived visible
migrants and refugees who live primarily in rural and regional areas.1 In particular
1
Linkage Project 0883896, in partnership with Municipal Association of Victoria and the Victorian
Office of Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship. More details at http://www.ssps.unimelb.edu.au/
research/projects/vmr.
the project examined the effectiveness of regional settlement and related policies at
Commonwealth, state and local levels; the employment experiences and pathways
of recent arrivals; and their sense of identity and belonging in regional locations.
The Project adopted a multi-faceted methodology to capture the interrelationship of
policies; government, community sector and business practices; as well as individ-
ual agency that shape the rural and regional settlement of recent arrivals. Specifically,
we conducted a national online survey of 106 professionals working in the settle-
ment area; focus groups with 90 stakeholders working in settlement across 8
research sites; 9 community information sessions; expert interviews with 37 senior
representatives of government and third sector organisations involved in settlement
and skilled migration policy, planning and coordination at a local, state and national
level as well as employers; and structured in-depth interviews with 85 newly arrived
migrants and refugees (hereafter referred to as “new arrivals”).
Interview participants were identified in community information sessions held in
2009–2010 and in consultation with focus group participants and community associa-
tion representatives in each area. Snowball sampling was used to identify additional
interview participants in each of the eight research sites. The local samples were aimed
to represent a cross-section of gender, age, migration streams (skilled, family, humani-
tarian) and countries of origin to reflect the locally settled groups of recent arrivals.
Interviews were conducted either in English or with an accredited interpreter depend-
ing on the preference of interviewees. A breakdown of the overall interview sample by
region of origin and visa category is provided below in Tables 13.1 and 13.2.
All interview and focus group data was coded and analysed supported by the
software NVivo 9.
The next sections primarily discuss responses to interview questions related to
identity and understandings of multiculturalism, complemented by answers from focus
group and key informant interview participants to questions on multiculturalism.
Table 13.1 Interview sample by region of origin

Region of origin Female Male Total (%)
Africa 12 22 40
South/South East Asia 20 22 49.4
Middle East 3 6 10.6
Table 13.2 Interview sample by visa category

Visa category Female Male Total (%)
Humanitarian 17 25 49.4
Skilled migranta 13 21 40
Family migrant 5 4 10.6
a
Includes international students and other recent arrivals who have subsequently transitioned to
Permanent Residence (PR) within the Skilled Migration stream
13.4 Interpretations of Multiculturalism: Integration,

Adjustment and Visibility
Multiculturalism as a policy is generally presented as a positive and substantial

move away from earlier periods of assimilation policies. The range of perspectives
on Australian multiculturalism held by policy stakeholders, local service providers
and former migrants and refugees interviewed as part of this research challenges
however such a notion of a clear break with ideas of assimilation.
A senior bureaucrat from the former DIAC was keen to emphasize how newly
arrived migrants and refugees were no longer being asked to assimilate:
But we’ve said to people, and I always said this, when I conduct citizenship ceremonies, I
say, you’ll see we are not expecting you to forget where you’ve come from, we want you to
bring all the good things about that and make Australia better […]. And it’s a very individ-
ual thing. So what multiculturalism is for you is very different to me. But it doesn’t make
you any less Australian than me, but you bring your things and you put it into your life and
your context. And I think giving people the permission and the capacity to do things is big.
And it goes back to settlement. (Senior DIAC Representative)
Most settlement stakeholders referred to integration and/or settlement rather than

assimilation but some described migrants and refugees as “assimilating” into the
broader community. Even some new arrivals referenced assimilation in their
responses to questions about multiculturalism, highlighting their conception that
they had to change to become a part of Australian society. Three interviewees from
migrant or refugee backgrounds and two settlement stakeholders described settle-
ment as “adjustment”. Significantly, adjustment was only ever described as a one-
way process, an action (to be) assumed by the new arrival, as suggested here by a
skilled visa holder from India:
I don’t like to be known as an Australian, I would like to be known, like, I would like to be
an Indian all through my life, but I’m happy to, I just adapt in the situations here, like, if I
would adhere […] to my culture, and if I adhere to the culture then to the values of India
more, here, it won’t be good, because there are lots of difference between the culture in my
place, the culture what I follow in India, and in Australia. So here people are more social,
more for, like, what I would say, they are following oriental culture, the western culture. So
I have to adjust with their culture, but I would like to (be) known as an Indian, but I will try
my level best to adjust to their culture and to, like, live with them. (Nina,2 female, Indian)
Another interviewee from South Sudan described settlement as “just a matter of

adjustment to the culture and to the system in the new country” (Achol, male).
Adjustment may not be a surprising element of interpretations of settlement in a
new environment from the new arrival’s perspective, yet its prominent role raises
the question how different, if at all, the experience of settlement in a country with
multicultural policies is from settling in a country without such policies. If multicul-
turalism is understood as a mere description of cultural diversity, and cultural diver-
sity merely as the coexistence of people from “diverse cultural backgrounds”, the
2
Pseudonyms have been used throughout this chapter.
former sits well with the primacy of adjustment as action on the part of new arrivals.
Such reductive understanding of multiculturalism as a simple description of the
coexistence of people from different cultural backgrounds was evident in the
responses of several interviewees.
One point of departure from much prior research was the inclusion of a wide
variety of research locations in this research, aimed at exploring differences in how
settlement and multiculturalism are experienced across metropolitan, rural and
regional sites. The notion of visibility, understood in relative terms as perceiving
oneself or being perceived by others as different from a given majority at a particu-
lar point in time on the basis of ethnic or racialised markers, provided a central
touchstone in this investigation. As we expected, experiences of visibility differed
significantly between metropolitan and regional or rural locations. New arrivals per-
ceived themselves as much more visible in regional and rural locations. The nature
and interpretations of these experiences of visibility varied however. For one
research participant, being positively identified as visibly and culturally different in
a smaller regional town made his settlement experience easier:
Others will argue probably in Melbourne is more multicultural, […] [in my regional town]
we do have other people from other nationalities, but it’s not that pronounced as compared
to Melbourne, so you might argue, well you’ll be much easier to integrate in Melbourne
because it’s more diverse as opposed to here, but I didn’t have any problems in integrating
in [this town]. Someone told me in Melbourne it’s much easier cause there’s people even
from your country, […] but here it’s less […]. But the fact that you are minority, people
recognize you cause, so, ‘oh, you are the African guy here working for the [name of
employer], people know you much quickly […] so in smaller cities you are much more
noticeable, and people recognize you and they want to know who you are and what you do
and in that way you make friends and you network, so yeah, it depends how you see (this).
(Serge, male, Zimbabwean)
Others perceived their visibility and the reactions it provoked as obstacles to feel-
ings of acceptance by the local population and a sense of belonging. Location emerged
as a key variable not only in relation to visibility. The interpretations of multicultural-
ism also varied across different places. While some recent arrivals described their
regional location as multicultural, others contrasted it with “multicultural Melbourne”
as Serge in the above quote. Beyond this explicit usage of the attribute “multicultural”
as demographic descriptor the interview accounts highlighted a range of both positive
and negative experiences of regional and metropolitan sites which hint to variations
of multiculturalism and multiculturalising processes.
13.5 Performative Multiculturalism
The descriptive aspects of the earlier mentioned celebratory and exhibitory multi-
culturalism tend to focus on culture, food, language and dress. They are limited in
reducing culture to consumables, conflating ethnicity with culture, and entrench-
ing fixed and homogenous notions of either (Castles et al. 1988: 44; Langer 1998).
The celebration of cultural diversity as the main benefit of multiculturalism is a key
theme of recent policy statements on Australian multiculturalism (for example

AMAC 2010), the framing of diversity as marketable benefit is characteristic of a
prevalent economistic discourse on immigration and multiculturalism (Boese 2009).
At the grassroots level an “exhibitory multiculturalism” (Hage 1998) is imple-
mented through displays of cultural diversity in one-off events that are typically
funded by state and federal government programs. Several settlement stakeholders
who participated in this research described activities such as Harmony Day or mul-
ticultural festivals as examples of “multiculturalism in action”. These interpreta-
tions are often underpinned by an “ethnic-group” model of diversity which is also
common in everyday discourse on diversity:
But there’s lots of examples, I think [the] Primary School, some of the photos that have
been taken about them lately has been great, with their sporting success, because there’s
some Sudanese, there’s a little Nepalese boy, there’s Kooris in the team, there’s a couple of
Chinese boys in the background and there’s a couple of little Aussies there, you know, and
they are all probably Aussies, you know what I mean, they’re all probably Aussies, but
that’s not how people identify. (Settlement service provider, Department of Education)
Whilst appraising the cultural diversity of the school population this interview
extract also demonstrates the exclusive notion of “Aussie”, which the speaker only
opens up to include children from other than Anglo backgrounds in a gesture of
self-correction. Discussions of multiculturalism and cultural diversity often included
the stereotyping and essentialising of supposed features of different groups such as
the description of Sudanese women as “dressing beautifully” and the Burmese com-
munity as “quiet and resourceful”. In the case of this focus group, other participants
recognised the stereotypical, homogenised and bounded nature of such representa-
tions, which highlights the range and contested nature of perspectives on multicul-
turalism within communities.
These conflicting interpretations also emerged in the participants’ interpretations
of multicultural events. In one regional location a Harmony Day event was described
as a “turning point” in local attitudes to new arrivals because it provided a chance
for wider community education about newly settling refugees in the area. According
to focus group participants, over time such one-off events led to increased levels of
acceptance and showed how new arrivals were “embedded” in the community.
Across research sites, public displays of cultural diversity were consistently raised
as positive examples of multicultural policy in action. One community worker
described a festival where “our multicultural friends can be seen in the parade and
display some of their goods and wares and dancing and drumming and all of those
wonderful things”; a settlement service manager cited the example of a multicultural
concert as a moment where many in his community came to show their support for
diversity against a minority of racist voices critical of migrant and refugee settle-
ment in the area. The mode of “exhibitory multiculturalism” (Hage 1998) while
limited and problematic in its symbolic construction and affirmation of difference
by white managers, was thus interpreted as a meaningful opportunity. Understood
as performative multiculturalism it can be seen as a vehicle of normalizing the pres-

ence of cultural diversity and multiculturalism (see Butler 1993; Dunn 2005).
Newly arrived migrants and refugees had mixed feelings about performing “their
culture” through such events. One interviewee took issue with the lack of dynamic
interaction that came along with narrowly interpreting multiculturalism as a display
of an Othered culture, where cultural diversity is considered an exclusive attribute
of minority cultures.
Sometimes when people are talking about multiculturalism, let us have different groups and
they’ll come and perform. They’ll come with their cultures they will come doing different
things and we can see them. But if we can all come together and do and participate and
contribute in each every group that will be the best way to go. […] if you had to have to sit
down and you perform […] [your] dance and I will perform my […] dance we are talking
about different cultures but we are not contributing […] So when I’m not seeing people
really interacting I’m a little bit sad. (Pascal, Togolese)
In contrast, other research participants viewed an increased awareness of cultural

diversity in the local community as aide in their incorporation into Australian soci-
ety. In their view it provided the opportunity for “intercultural dialogue”. A Southern
Sudanese-Australian woman felt that cultural events provided her with a chance to:
[…] show myself, I have, I have good things to show it to the world. I have dancing, I have
clothes, I have me, I have everything as a Sudanese, that’s what I know Sudanese have good
things to show. (Agnes, Sudanese Nuer)
Agnes’s appreciation of the opportunity to perform highlights her discontent

with the common deficit perspective on people from Sudanese backgrounds. The
performance of ethnicity grants her a rare and precious window to correct such ste-
reotypical views by constituting another rich and positive identity. Differences in
interpreting the value of performative multiculturalism emerged thus across both
local settlement stakeholders and the newly settling residents from migrant and
refugee backgrounds.
The range of interpretations of performative multiculturalism discussed in this
section complicates an appraisal of multiculturalism in a local context (see also
Duffy 2005). On the one hand, treating multiculturalism primarily as colourful cul-
tural diversity that can be staged on demand is evidently limited and problematic
(Hage 1998), notwithstanding the explicit or implicit espousal of multicultural dis-
plays by advisory councils expressed through funding opportunities offered by the
former Immigration Department and organisations such as the Victorian
Multicultural Commission. On the other hand, the performance of multiculturalism
can operate as starting point to an unsettling of a white, local identity and a normal-
ization of multiculturalism. As has been discussed here, performative multicultural-
ism can assist newly arrived residents to project a more positive identity and
settlement stakeholders to convey the multicultural policy message by affirming the
reality of diverse local communities. By itself such performative multiculturalism
also signals the limited space that is available to recently arrived members of
Australian society. There are however indications of another kind of practice and
process of multiculturalism to which we turn now.
13.6 Multiculturalising
Alongside the instances of performative multiculturalism emerged a dynamic pro-

cess, which was situated in local community-internal relationships. This process
involved a range of local stakeholders who engaged with new arrivals primarily
through their work. These included settlement workers, ESL teachers but also pri-
mary school teachers, health practitioners and multicultural liaison workers at
Centrelink, the Australian government’s key social service agency, and the Police.
We have coined the term “multiculturalising” to distinguish these interactions from
the mundane and ordinary nature of intercultural interaction captured in the notion
of “everyday multiculturalism”. Multiculturalising highlights the process of learn-
ing and unlearning that takes place when de facto “White National Managers”
(Hage 1998) engage with new arrivals in a realm in-between “panicked” and
“unpanicked multiculturalism” (Noble 2009: 50–1). It occurs in places where new
relationships are being forged or old interrelationships reviewed between different
“local” stakeholders in a locality, in order to join efforts in responding effectively to
the arrival of “new” groups of residents and customers.
The role played by organisations involved in settlement services at the coal-face
was noted earlier. Many of the stakeholders in regional locations with limited immi-
gration histories emphasized their formal or informal roles of translating what it
means to live in a diverse community both to new arrivals and other “local” com-
munity members. Significant variance emerged at the local level as to how multicul-
turalism was understood and what tools and strategies were used to implement
multicultural policies. Some focus group respondents were keen to link new arrivals
with established groups of former migrants and refugees in their local area. Others
tended to attribute diversity to new arrivals and other minority groups in the local
population, contrasting the multicultural capital cities with their own towns, or other
sites that have had generations of migrant settlement.
Beyond the one-off events classified earlier as performative multiculturalism,
various approaches were put forward to improve interaction between new and old
residents and to foster the social inclusion of new arrivals. Formal multicultural
policy or cultural diversity strategies were either already established or in devel-
opment in two of the six regional research sites. One state government employee
in a regional site highlighted the limited value of multicultural strategies by
describing them as “just on paper”, signalling the need for accompanying strate-
gies and processes. In a rural site where there was no respective formal policy or
strategy in place and recent arrivals were highly visible, the focus group partici-
pants identified the need for developing a “multicultural attitude” in the commu-
nity. A health professional spoke of the hospital as a site for this multicultural
mind-set with staff:
[C]om[ing] from a different mindset where they’re not used to migrants, they’re not used to
so many, maybe accommodating, they’re not used to a multicultural attitude and a positive
attitude to people who don’t speak English, so there’s so much more work to be done in
encouraging best practice. (Health professional)
Some of the observations and insights shared by local stakeholders in service

provider and government positions carried an air of arrogance and superiority, asso-
ciated with notions of elite cosmopolitanism. In many instances however, the focus
group discussions between different stakeholders on the challenges they associated
with the arrival of ethnic groups they felt unfamiliar with, revealed signs of self-
reflection and at times self-criticism, of plans for action and transformation. This
included the awareness and problematisation of not knowing enough about the
background of new residents and their pre-arrival experiences, the critique of biased
service delivery, and plans to create spaces for intra- and intercultural socialising.
Some of the problems local stakeholders identified emerged also in the assess-
ments of the Australian multicultural model by new arrivals. An international stu-
dent highlighted the limitations of Australian multiculturalism by critiquing current
representations of Australia’s national identity. He identified a need for investment
in raising awareness in Australian society about its diversity.
Well I’d say the idea of Australian ethnicity and identity would have to be changed, because
I mean come on they really don’t consider Aborigines as Australians. Like the idea of eth-
nicity would have to be changed a bit like what it means to be Australian […]. So maybe
slowly over time the government should initiate procedures [and] processes like the school
level even at the primary school level to get young children acclimatized to the idea of
internationalism […]. Maybe that way because to me multiculturalism all you have differ-
ent people from different parts of the world but you can accept them. Like if you see some-
one who is like you but people still ask about her background still ask, ‘where are you
from?’ (Malik)
Echoing Pascal’s earlier comments, multiculturalism at the coal-face was

described for example as diverse communities coming together to learn “different
ways, different cultures, different behaviour” (Susan). Susan was one of the first
South Sudanese women to obtain childcare work in the local area. She was pleased
with the chance to use her role in the centre to teach children about different cultures
whilst experiencing new ways of communication and education herself. The mutual,
multi-directional character of learning from each other and across the community
was an aspect of multiculturalism emphasised also by others.
I think multiculturalism is kind of, you’ve got, when you have a few different cultures and
they try to live together and they try to share their culture with each other and share their
ideas and this kind of thing. And if they can live, all those people can live together happily,
and I think it’s sort of good, multicultural. (Sunil, Indian)
These examples highlight the intersubjective notion of social existence that is

captured in the notion of everyday multiculturalism. It can lead to feelings of accep-
tance on behalf of new arrivals based on interactions with people that signal interest
and understanding.
Hassan, who described such experiences, also noted a disjuncture between this
everyday multiculturalism and the official face of Australia’s multicultural policies.
He also asked that a more complex vision of multiculturalism be articulated by the

government:
People are very keen here they understand who you are because here it’s a multicultural
society. They understand lots of cultures, lots of people […]. People need more education,
people need more advertisement regarding the multicultural society. Because Australian
government accepted that it’s a multicultural society. Accepted that you just grant visa for
every country, several nations to be the multicultural society. And I think […] Australian
government have to be ready, have to be prepared and have to be just build infrastructure for
be a multicultural society. (Hassan, Iranian)
The necessity to engage the broader community and sell multiculturalism to the
population more widely was also identified by government representatives who
took part in this research. The earlier mentioned incarnations of performative mul-
ticulturalism can be viewed as examples of such a marketing attempt or, as we sug-
gested, as part of a strategy of normalisation of multiculturalism (Butler 1993; Dunn
2005). Viewed in this light, the performance of multiculturalism with all its limita-
tions appears as a productive complementation of the multiculturalising processes
and the everyday multiculturalism that takes place to a greater or lesser extent
in local settings.
The need for political representation, for a voice as a “new” or recent community
member, highlights another dimension of multiculturalism which is mostly absent
from accounts of everyday multiculturalism and seems diametrically opposed to the
aims of performative multiculturalism, but might be achieved through multicultur-
alising efforts. Saleem described the labour of becoming a part of Australian society
while also assisting fellow community members in their integration attempts and
explaining his culture to others:
I did many courses, to be honest with you, during the last three years I tried to be very active
in order to integrate with the Australian society. I did many things and I got lots of contacts
from here […] from different organizations, non-profit organizations, to support communi-
ties, to support new arrivals, so as a community leader I tried and I did my best in order to,
not just for myself, for my community also, for my community members also in order to
integrate with the society. […] So we have to integrate with the society, we have to convey
our voices to the society. We are here to tell them that we are here, […] we need job, we
need work, we need different stuff, education. So I’m doing my best in order to convey my
community members’ voices to the public, in order to know about them. (Saleem, Iraqi)
The desire to participate socially and economically as well as to be recognized in

their cultural or religious particularity was voiced by several research participants.
Tina, a Muslim woman from a South East Asian country savoured the opportunity
provided by an adult education provider to raise awareness and knowledge of
Muslims’ way of life in her regional residential town:
So they want me […], to have workshops how to teach multilevel class, which I’m doing in
the classroom, and also to raise awareness about specific cultures, because I want to raise
awareness about being Muslim, so how do how we, being Muslim, like, basically our day
to day life, what is the difference or […] if you’re Muslim, how would your day involve,
how does that how […]. Yeah, how different are you than other people and then why you
call yourself Muslims? What is it? You know, I just, I want to tell them it’s not just about
jihad and all that terrorism and all that. […] Oh and the prayer rules. […] Some people are
not aware that it’s quite a lot of Muslims in [this town]. (Tina, Minang)
The engagement described by Saleem and Tina goes beyond the selling of ben-
efits of diversity to the Australian public. In Saleem’s case it extends to seeking the
political representation of the voices of recent community members drawing on the
earlier mentioned democratic values underpinning Australian multiculturalism;
Tina’s case demonstrates the close interlinking of cultural recognition and structural
justice in a society where Muslims experience discrimination in many spheres of
life (HREOC 2004). Multiculturalising practices such as the workshop described in
the interview quote are thus responsive to the intersections of economic and cultural
injustices and the interrelated needs for recognition and redistribution (Young 2000;
Fraser 2003).
Multiculturalising is based on a fundamental acceptance of newcomers, but it
extends beyond that to a process of active instigation of social change grounded in
an understanding of cultural and economic injustices. Where such a basic accep-
tance is weakly developed or missing altogether, new arrivals might think little of
Australian multiculturalism. Ellen, a visibly different participant in a regional town,
articulated her sense of multiculturalism with mixed feelings because of the every-
day racism she had experienced from residents and colleagues in the nursing home
where she worked (see also Chaps. 10 and 12 on this subject). This highlights the
vital role of active engagement with racism and discrimination as part of the multi-
culturalising process. This inclusion of antagonism as a part of rather than as anti-
dote to multiculturalising efforts emphasizes the latter’s continuous, process-based
nature.
13.7 Conclusion
This paper has discussed a range of experiences and interpretations of Australian

multiculturalism by recently arrived migrants and refugees as well as by other local
community and policy stakeholders whose work engages with recent arrivals and
their settlement in regional and rural locations. This variety ranges from narrow
interpretations of multiculturalism as a descriptor of cultural diversity to the oppor-
tunities and limitations of performative multiculturalism to an understanding of
multiculturalism as a deliberate and ongoing inter-active process that involves not
only “old” and “new” community members, but also de facto managers and address-
ees of multicultural policies. It is this latter interpretation of multiculturalism as
multiculturalising practice that we claim requires more attention in the conceptuali-
sation of multiculturalism which is currently dominated by a dichotomous treatment
of policy versus practice. This under-explored dimension has been understood here
as deliberate process locally situated stakeholders are engaging in, in more or less
“unpanicky” ways (see Noble 2009). Its label “multiculturalising” highlights its
nature as process and action rather than as a status in time. Instead of describing
multiculturalism as either the fait accompli of merely symbolic “cultural diversity”

or as real, banal or ordinary intersubjective social practice, multiculturalising
bespeaks a never-completed, conscious process of mutual engagement with and
negotiation of difference aimed at achieving a transformation. It comprehends the
reciprocal learning and unlearning of dealing with differences and commonalities in
different social settings such as the workplace, the childcare setting and the com-
munity meeting, which forms part of everyday multiculturalism. Yet it is more than
that. Whether limited to the mere identification of racist practice or extending to
ensuring the political representation of the voices of new arrivals, it is a process that
engages actors on all sides of the public management of multiculturalism. Rather
than being experienced as naturally evolving, straight forward, and “smooth sail-
ing”, multiculturalising typically involves intent, negotiation and dissent.
This process of multiculturalising is never-completed for two reasons associated
with time and space. First, due to the nature of ongoing migration and refugee
movements with “new” groups and “new” differences, new adjustments are con-
tinuously required on behalf of all protagonists. This is evident in the difficulties
settlement stakeholders mention in relation to working with recent new arrivals as
opposed to previous groups. Rather than labelling specific groups of arrivals as
incompatible with or particularly challenging to Australian multiculturalism a pro-
cess of multiculturalising takes as given the never-ending investment in learning
about and from each other. Secondly, multiculturalising is never completed because
of the intricate interlinking of social change with changes in the life course and thus
the biographies of recent and not so recent members of society, Meanings and defi-
nitions of “difference” are fluid and changing, as the changing perceptions of visi-
bility testify. So is the engagement with various kinds of difference over a lifetime
within and between generations (Kley 2011). Multiculturalising is therefore always
an ongoing project, including lessons, mistakes and failures, but with inherently
transformational potential. To conclude, rather than bidding multiculturalism fare-
well and replace it by interculturalism as “enabling political myth” (Kymlicka 2012:
214), multiculturalism remains not only a useful vehicle to “fight for diversity”
(Kymlicka 2012: 215) in Australia, similar to Canada. Beyond that, we argue for its
validation if understood as a complex, inter-relational and multi-dimensional pro-
cess shaped by and potentially also shaping policies, interlinking policy and every-
day practice.
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Index
A Shari’a and legal pluralism, 96–97

Access and Equity Strategy, 189 submission, 95–96
Accommodation “twin tolerations,” notion of, 95
interculturalism, 58 Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural
legal pluralism, 102 Council (AGMC Inc),
political, 51 170, 178–179
resentment, 60 Australian Multicultural Council
AFIC. See Australian Federation (AMC), 189
of Islamic Councils Australian multiculturalism
(AFIC) controversy AFIC controversy, 95–97
AGMC. See Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural bipartisan support, 92–94
Council (AGMC Inc) cultural extinction or invisibility, 188
Al-Qaeda, 75–79, 81 “genius of Australian multiculturalism,”
Ambivalence, 22, 82, 86, 128 92–93, 189
Anti-Racism Strategy Labor Government approach, 93
Australian Bureau of Statistics report, legal pluralism, 91–92
2010, 192 MCP index, 93–94
CALD populations, 192 multicultural nation, 188
civic integration, 192 new integrationism, 93
multicultural and social inclusion polices, pattern of retreat, 93
186–187, 192 retreat from multiculturalism,
new integrationism, 191 concept of, 91–92
race and racism, 189–190 Sharia (see Shari’a law)
social networks, 192 Australian Research Council (ARC)
Arrival City: The Final Migration Linkage Project, 186
and Our Next World, 62 Australia’s Social Inclusion Agenda
Assimilation (2007–2013)
cultural, 13 citizens/residents, undifferentiated, 191
and ethnic hyphenation, 18 Hawke-era, Social Justice, 190
and monocultural, 148 Howard-era, Social Cohesion, 190
policies, 7, 212 Keating-era, Social Justice cum
religious and cultural rights, 34 Cosmopolitanism, 190
Australian Federation of Islamic Councils policy’s objectives, 190
(AFIC) controversy social inclusion, discourse of, 190

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16003-0
224 Index
B and behavioural manifestations, 192–194

Belongings, multicultural civic integration, 192
acknowledgement, denials of, 161 cultural competency or proficiency, 195
cultural hybridity, 157 exclusionary practices, 196
data collection, 159 migrant youth, 186
description, 155–156 Cultural diversity
gender and age, 158 Australian national identity, 13, 187
immigration and diversity, 156–157 European, 138–139
indigenous populations, 157 in Italy, 11–12
integrationism, 159 multicultural policies, 7–8, 188, 213–215
interethnic habitus, 163 social cohesion agenda, 4–5
local diverse communities, 163–164 Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD)
multicultural policy, 156 populations, 100, 128, 170, 173,
national belonging, 161–163 192, 210
national identity, 165 Cultural pluralism, 25, 144, 188
neighbourhood, 165 Cultural rights, 3, 5, 8, 31–34, 46, 51, 181
participants, 160 Culture and economy
public places, 159–160 immigrants, 63–64
public racist harassment, 159 migration and post-migration, 64–65
recognition and rights, 156 municipal regulations, 64
semi-structured interviews, 158 traditional cultures, 62–63
Biculturalism, 108, 109 Culture-based education, New Zealand
biculturalism, 108, 109
democratic politics, 116
C disciplines (see Disciplinary knowledge)
CALD. See Culturally and linguistically discrimination, 109
diverse (CALD) populations 1877 Education Act, 109
Cannibalism, 54–55 educational failure, 109
Child sacrifice, 54–55 exclusion, 109
Circumcision individualisation, 112–113
female, 33 liberal model, 108–109
indigenous Australians, 41 localised knowledge, 112
legality, 35 Maori and immigrants, 107
of male minors, 9, 34, 36, 42–43 minority groups, disadvantages, 109–110
for Muslims and Jews, 40 poverty, 109
non-consensual, 36 processes of instruction, 115
ritual, 34, 39–40 purpose of schooling, 110
Civic integration, 55, 186–192 race/ethnicity, 108
Classism, 172 working-class and minority students,
Community and Radicalisation, 74, 83 114–115
Conviviality. See Counter-extremist narratives
Cosmopolitanism, 6, 9, 14, 101, 163, 165, 217
Counter-extremist narratives D
and conviviality, 83–84 Demystifying Islamic Finance—Correcting
government-based participants, 84–86 Misconceptions, Advancing Value
Muslim-Australians, 85 Propositions, 99
national identity, 84 Denizens, 80–82, 86
Countering Violent Extremist Narratives Department of Immigration and Citizenship
(CVEN), 74 (DIAC), 186, 189, 206,
Critical multiculturalism, 189, 208 209–210, 212
Cross-cultural networking Disciplinary knowledge
African and Pacific Island participants, 194 arts, humanities and sciences, 110
Arabic-speaking survey, 194–195 ethnic/indigenous knowledge, 112
barriers, 196, 200–201 philosophy, 116–117
Index 225
social community, 111 developmental tasks, 171–172

Western knowledge, 112 direct and specific incorporation, 172, 174
Discourse education, 173
civil-society, 25 exclusion, 172
counter-narrative, 10 heteronormative and gendernormative, 171
multiculturalism, 33 identity and isolation, 173
political, 94–95, 97–98, 100, 102 indirect incorporation, 172
social inclusion, 190, 199 racism, 173
terrorism, 83 religion, 173–174
Disenchantments Gender
counter-narrative theory, 72 “The Ethnic Excuses,” 174
CVEN, 74–75 hegemonic and homogenizing
Gilroy’s analysis, 73 construction, 174–175
macro-narrative to micro-narrative, 81–82 homophobia, 174–175
myth vs. history racism, 175
counter-narrative models, 76 state practices of exclusion, 175
counter-terror and pro-terror, 79 “Genius of Australian multiculturalism,”
denizens, 80–81 92–93, 100
features, 78 GLBTIQ. See Gay, lesbian, bisexual,
Islamic narratives, 77 transgender, intersex and queer
OODA-loop, 77 (GLBTIQ) Australian narratives
solidarity and diversity, 73
terrorism, 71–72, 75–76
H
Heteronormativity
E cultural narratives, 174
1877 Education Act, 109 ethnic excuses, 170
Emergenza Nomadi (Nomad Emergency), 141 ethnic/religious families
Enlightenment, culture-based schools, 114 and communities, 171
Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria migrant/refugee story, 181
(ECCV), 178 multicultural policies, 170–171
“The Ethnic Excuses,” 174 processes of decolonising, 177
Ethnicity Heterotopia, 121–122, 130
GLBTIQ young people, 171–172, 181 Homophobia, 171–172, 174–176, 179, 181
migrant/refugee communities, 175 Homosexuality
symbolic, 25 African nationalism, 176
“Ethnic options,” 25 migrant and refugee communities, 175
Everyday multiculturalism, 206–207, 216–218 symptom of Westernization, 176
multicultural local belongings, 163 Human rights
productive relationality, 162 affiliations and identifications, 32
Exhibitory multiculturalism, 213–214 Cologne decision
assimilation, 34
circumcision, 35
F German court decision, 36
Federation of Ethnic Communities ritual circumcision, 34
Council of Australia (FECCA), 178 cultures and religions, 31, 32
individual
circumcision, 44
G democracy, 42
Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex European and American responses,
and queer (GLBTIQ) Australian 43–44
narratives health benefits, 43
complexity of living, 173 religious/cultural community, 44–45
cultural identification, 172 right to culture, 41
226 Index
Human rights (cont.) Islam

legislation, 34 alleged incompatibility, 175
multicultural citizenship, 31–32 civic integration, 55
multiculturalism, 9, 32, 33 neo-orientalist discourses, 79
parental consent, 39 Salafi Islam, 76
religion and consenting adults, 36–39 and Shari’a, 97–98, 103
universal human rights norms, 42 and terrorism, 73, 83
Islamic Finance, 98–99, 103
Islamophobia, 36, 84–85, 172
I Italian educational system
IGLHRC. See International Gay and Lesbian Europe, intercultural approach, 137–139
Human Rights Commission interculturalism vs. multiculturalism,
(IGLHRC) 139–141
ILGA. See International Lesbian and Gay interviews, 146
Association (ILGA) negative representation, migration,
Indigenous knowledges, 112 141–142
Institutional racism principles, 136
European Network, 142 public authorities, 146–147
foreign students, 143 public institutions, 137
xenophobia, 142 security issues, 148
Intercultural education
cross-cultural approaches, 138
economic and political alliance, 137–138 L
ethnic mosaic, 138 Labor Government’s Multicultural Policy
European identity and citizenship, 139 and Social Inclusion Agenda, 186
evaluation process, 145–146 Legal pluralism, 102
general instructions and principles, 145 Australian values, 94
implementation, 144 bipartisan rejection, 95
legislative steps, 144 Islamic Finance, 98–99, 103
logic of relations, 138 Labor Government, 94–95
New Zealand (see Culture-based neoliberal multiculturalism, 101
education, New Zealand) Shari’a-compliant finance, 100
pedagogy for foreigners, 137 and Shari’a in Australia, 94–97
scarce funds, 144–145 Liberalism
Interculturalism culture-based education, 108–109
anti-multicultural rhetoric in Europe, 140 Kymlicka’s, 60
Canadian case, 140–141 and multiculturalism, 32
Circolare No.73/1994, 143 procedural, 52
Circolare No.301 of 1989, 143 substantive, 52, 55
cultural diversity, 136 Liberal nationalism, 23
foreign students, 136 Local knowledges, 112
fundamental right, 143
immigration, 135–136
media and policy reports, 136–137 M
public funds, 147 Marketisation. See School choice, marketisation
special classes, 144 MCP. See Multicultural policy (MCP)
Intercultural paradigm, 148 Migrant settlement, 210–211
International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Migrant youth
Commission (IGLHRC), 179 anti-racism and social networks,
International Lesbian and Gay Association 191–192, 199–200
(ILGA), 170, 177–179 Australia’s multicultural policy,
Intersectionality 187–190, 199
contemporary multiculturalism, 171 Australia’s Social Inclusion Agenda
and multiple identities, 181–182 (2007–2013), 190–191, 199
Index 227
cross-cultural networking practices, 186, economic benefits, 50, 93

193–196, 200 ethics and hospitality, 6
Formal and Informal Social Networks everyday multiculturalism, 207–209
survey, 193 in gender and sexual diversity, 174–175
marginalised or at-risk groups, 199 government policy, 188
methodology, 193–194 immigration policies, 206
new arrivals, 211 inclusion/exclusion, non-citizens, 3
racism and discrimination, 196–199 individual protection, 54
residency or citizenship, 193 integration or settlement, 212–213
social integration, 193 interculturalism, concept of, 208
Migration intersectionalities and multiple identities,
American, 24 181–182
dynamics, 7 Kymlicka’s, 53
and immigration, 50, 141 MCP index, 93
legislation reform, 27 migration and immigration, 50–51
Nomad Emergency, 141–142 Modood’s
OHCHR, 142 extremism, 60
and public safety, 141 fluidity, 59
religion and national origin, 23 liberal democracies, 60
Romani peoples, 141–142 liberalism and secular
xenophobia and racism, 142 multiculturalism, 60
Monoculturalism, 135–137 Muslim women, 59–60
Multicultural Art and Festivals Grants, 189 resentment, 61–62
Multicultural citizenship, 54, 156, 165 secularism, 61
Multicultural education. See Culture-based multidisciplinary, 4
education, New Zealand multisexual and multigendered, 181–182
(Re)multiculturalisation, 13 Muslim immigrants, 53
Multiculturalising neoliberal (see Neoliberal
Australia’s national identity, 217 multiculturalism)
cultural or religious particularity, 218–219 practice-oriented nature, 206–207
everyday multiculturalism, 216–218 premises, 5–6
migration and refugee movements, 220 procedural liberalism, 52
multicultural attitude, 216 proponents and opponents, 7
notion of social existence, 217 queer realities, exclusion of, 170–174
panicked and unpanicked multiculturalism, retreat, 7
216, 219–220 school choice and marketisation, 119–131
performative multiculturalism, 216 social cohesion, 4
political representation, 218 social justice, 5
racism and discrimination, 219 visibility, notion of, 213
settlement services, 216 “Multiculturalism 2.0,” 207
Multiculturalism “Multiculturalism from below,” 207
active participation, 51, 58–59 Multicultural policy (MCP)
anti-racism and social networks, 191–192 access and equity approach, 188
apostasy/atheism, 52 2012 Access and Equity Inquiry Panel
assimilation policies, 8–9 Report, 210
Australian (see Australian CALD populations, 210
multiculturalism) cultural diversity, 187, 189
celebratory rituals, 208 descriptive multiculturalism, 187
citizenship, 51 DIAC, 209–210
cosmopolitanism, 9–10 Galbally Report, 210
crisis, 7, 8 heteronormative and gendernormative
critical, 208 framing, 170–171
as cultural pluralism, 188 index, 93–94, 101–102
“doing of multiculturalism,” 207, 208 National Anti-Racism Strategy, 189–190
228 Index
Multicultural policy (MCP) (cont.) legal pluralism, 101

new integrationism, 188–189 MCPs, 101
retreat from multiculturalism, 189 self-empowerment, 103
services for migrants, 188 Shari’a in Australian courts, 101–102
“Multicultural real,” 207–208 New Zealand, culture-based education. See
Multicultural Youth Sports Partnership Culture-based education, New
Program, 189 Zealand
Muslims 9/11 truthers, 83
Al-Qaeda, 78
Australians, 85, 95–103
civic integration, 55 O
cultures and faith, 7–8, 61 Observe, orient, decide, act (OODA-loop), 77
hijab, 198 Office of the United Nations High
migrants, 44 Commissioner for Human Rights
and non-Muslim, 75 (OHCHR), 142
post 9/11, 180
ritual circumcision, 34–36, 39–40, 43
Shari’a law, 53, 91–98 P
terrorism, 73, 82 “Panicked multiculturalism,” 216, 219–220
Pedagogy for foreigners, 137
The People of Australia: Australia’s
N Multicultural Policy, 93
National Anti-Racism Partnership Performative multiculturalism
and Strategy, 189 cultural diversity, 213–215
National identity exhibitory multiculturalism, 214–215
assimilation, 18 migrant and refugee settlement, 215
British, 57 Peril (magazine)
Canadian, 56–57 Asian-Australian interest, 180
civil sphere, 18 gender and sexually diverse themes,
ethnic hyphenation, 18 179, 180
inclusion The Plaid Bag Connection, 179–180
Americanization, 27 queer-friendly and promoting a queer
Catholics and Jews, 26 agenda, 180–181
claims-making, 25 The Plaid Bag Connection, 179
community of fate, 24–25 Pluralism, 4, 13, 23, 25, 76
ethnic group, 26 Procedural liberalism, 52
Hispanics and Anglos, 27
pluralism, 25
solidarity, 28 Q
incorporation Queer histories and realities
ambivalence, 22 gender and sexual diversity,
American immigration, 24 multiculturalism, 174–175
assimilation, 22–23 GLBTIQ young people, 171–172
internal and external aspects, 23 ILGA and AGMC, 177–179
liberal nationalism, 23 multisexual and multigendered, 181–182
multicultural policies, 58 Peril, 179–181
multiple traditions, 19 reclaiming multiculturalism,
role, 18 170, 175–177
societal community, 21 Queerphobia, 175, 180
solidarity, 17–18
WASP, 20–21
Nationalism, 28, 50, 176 R
Nativism, 21 Racial Discrimination Act, 92, 188
Neoliberal multiculturalism Racial fetishisation, 173
Index 229
Racism heterotopia, 121–122, 130

academic performance, 198 impact of, 120
cross-cultural engagement, 196–199 literacy and numeracy tests, 123
definition, 191 minority students, 120–121
and discrimination, 196–199 My School website, 122–123
exclusionary practices, 198 newspaper articles, 124–125
migrant youth, 196–197 privatisation, 122
school choice, 121, 131 racism and communities, 121
visible difference, 198 real estate agents, 124
white cultural dominance, 197 safety nets, 120
young people’s, 155–166 “tiger mothers,” 125–127
Reclaiming multiculturalism working class, 127–129
demonizing (crusading against), 177 Secularism, 33, 44, 61, 96
emergence of multicultural queer Sexuality
communities, 181 and gender, 174–175
exoticising (othering), 177 reclaiming multiculturalism,
homosexuality, 176 175–177
pedestalling (mythologizing), 177 same-sex, 176
re-interpreting or appropriating, 177 Shari’a law
sexualities and genders, 175–176 artificial division, 100
“Reclaiming Multiculturalism: Global and financial opportunity, 98–100
Citizenship and Ethical Engagement Hadud punishments, 98
with Diversity,” 181 and Islam, 97–98
Refugee settlement, 210–211 and legal pluralism in Australia, 94–95
Relativism Social cohesion, 4, 72–73, 102, 121–122,
Canada, multiculturalism, 55 136, 156–157, 164, 187–190,
child sacrifice, cannibalism and sati, 54–55 192–193
liberal societies, 56 Social inclusion
Religion anti-racism strategy, 186–187
and consenting adults Australia’s Social Inclusion Agenda
liberalism, 38–39 (2007–2013), 190–191, 199
religious formation, 37–38 discourse, 190, 199
recognition, 33 Social justice, 5, 7, 11, 108–109, 115, 130,
and the state, 51–53 146, 170, 188
Resentment, 60–61 “Social Networks, Belonging and
Review of the Taxation Treatment of Islamic Active Citizenship among
Finance, 99 Migrant Youth,” 186
Romani peoples, interculturalism. See Italian Social realism
educational system curricular knowledge, 107–108
Rural Australia disciplinary knowledge, 110–111
migrant settlement, 207, 210–211, 219 meaning-making, 115
multicultural attitude, 216 purpose of schooling, 110
notion of visibility, 213 Social solidarity, 17
Substantive liberalism, 52, 55
Symbolic ethnicity, 25
S
Salafi Islam, 76
Same-Sex Attracted (SSA) people, 174 T
Sati, 54–55 Terrorism
School choice, marketisation American, 80
accountability and transparency, 119 and extremism, 10
description, 130–131 and Islam, 83
examination results, 124 Muslims, 82
fees, middle class families, 120 and violence, 75
230 Index
Terror’s ask: Insurgency Within Islam, 77 form of, 126

Transphobia, 181 White multiculturalism, 141
Whiteness, working class
academic success and ethnicity, 127
U Britain and Australia, 128
“Unpanicked multiculturalism,” 208, 216, categories, 128
219–220 consumer of education, 129
My School website, 129
social imaginary, 129–130
V white Australia policy, 128
VCE. See Victorian Certificate of Higher
Education (VCE)
Victorian Certificate of Higher Education X
(VCE), 180 Xenophobia, 7, 76, 80, 142
Visible Migrants and Refugees in Regional
and Rural Australia, 210–211
Y
Youth
W in Australia, 186
White Anglo–Saxon Protestants (WASP), belongings (see Belongings,
20–21 multicultural)
White Australia policy, 128, 180 GLBTIQ, 172
White flight migrant (see Migrant youth)
Australian federal Labor Government, 121 Muslims, 85, 159
Chinese and Indian students, 120, 125 racism, 196–197

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Part I Histories and Politics of Multiculturalism

Part II Justice and Education as Key Dimensions of Multiculturalism

9 A Multicultural Italy? ........................................................................... 135

Part III Performing Multicultural Belongings

Index ................................................................................................................ 223

Keywords Cultural diversity • Cosmopolitanism • Migration • Multiculturalism •

Against an absence of new articulations of post-Westphalian approaches to citizen-

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 3

1.1 Premises of Multiculturalism

The deep philosophical foundations underpinning multiculturalism go a long way

1.2 Promises of Multiculturalism

Linked to the notion of premises, the enduring promises of multiculturalism remain

1.3 The Perceived “Problems” of Multiculturalism

serious challenges to governments everywhere but particularly in Western émigré

individual contributions from various theoretical and empirical perspectives will

1.4 Book Structure

1.4.1 Part I: Histories and Politics of Multiculturalism

of universalism. Imbert finds that multiculturalism is not grounded in a universalism

1.4.2 Part II: Justice and Education as Key Dimensions

Disenchantment, a concept not too dissimilar to Imbert’s idea of “resentment”, is

(the “Italian way”) of promoting intercultural education, Armillei’s appraisal of

1.4.3 Part III: Performing Multicultural Belongings

It is perhaps heuristically not very helpful to describe and discuss “multicultural-

expectations from majoritarian groups are sufficient to provide conclusive argu-

Keywords Assimilation • Liberal nationalism • Multiculturalism • Monoculturalism

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 17

2.1 Who Are We?

2.2 Incorporation as a Social Process

In Waldinger’s sketchy discussions, he, at least implicitly, describes the current

2.3 National Identity and Expanding the Boundaries

Elsewhere I (2012) have argued that multiculturalism ought to be viewed as a form

2.4 Past and Present

Abstract The discourse of multicultural and multi-religious recognition in

Keywords Religious recognition • Cultural rights • Human rights • Multiculturalism

All contemporary nation-states are multicultural and multi-religious in having

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 31

It is interesting that many of the illustrations selected for analysis in Parekh’s

3.1 The Cologne Decision and Its Aftermath

Medical Forum, an atheist lobby group responded by advocating a universal ban on

3.2 Religion and Consenting Adults

inconsistent application is beyond the scope of this chapter. My contention is that

as the “half-life of religion”. Each generation of non-practice and affiliation allows

3.3 Human Rights

3.4 A New Individual Human Right: The Right to Belong to,

Paediatrics, Circumcision Taskforce (2012), argued that while there should be

injury or harm. This is a universal, individual human right—the right of a child to

What is evidenced by the circumcision case is the continuing fragility of cultural

Where multiculturalism has not yet become a poisoned term—

Abstract This chapter discusses multiculturalism as an ideology and social

Keywords Multiculturalism • Liberalism • Religion • Resentment • Secularism •

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 49

The role of multiculturalism is to help newcomers and their descendants function

4.2 Religion and the State

4.3 Protecting the Minority from the Majority

His choice of the words “can be potentially unjust” as opposed to Kymlicka’s

4.4 Values and Relativism

self-immolation) would be unacceptable for just about everybody and clitoridec-